


Traces

by minkmix



Category: Dark Angel (TV)
Genre: AU, Abduction, Psychological Torture, i guess?, yeah a yes to au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-16 10:10:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 51,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15434751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkmix/pseuds/minkmix
Summary: Hey there- I was alerted by a reader that one of the chapters was a repeat. I looked and yes it was. I looked some more and ALL the chapters posted were wrong except the first TWO. XD I have no idea how this happened because I check them as I post them, but I apologize to anyone who tried to read this and got extremely confused. Everything should be ok now, and if anything seems wrong and if you have a moment, please let me know! <3This is a sequel to 'Heat and picks up from the end of it.Reading 'Heat' would help. A bit. But I think this fic could be a stand alone.here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14459901/chapters/33404712





	1. Traces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [usowishuwereme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/usowishuwereme/gifts).



> Thank you U. U know who U are. <3

The rain had flooded the basement floors of Jam Pony again.

Alec walked down the steps and through the water running like a waterfall down the rusty metal ramp. He paused at the bottom of it, standing aside for the messengers pushing their bikes up to the street. The loud billboard like plasma screen was on high enough to hear the downtown traffic being redirected around a four-car pile over on Aurora. A scheduling warning was blinking on and off as routes were remapped, runs reassigned, and packages pushed up to priority as every precious second of the clock ticked by.

"Hey! Hey, Alec!"

With all the chaos and noise Alec wasn't sure how Normal spotted him but he did. With a sigh, he broke into the stream of human traffic and let it carry him over to the dispatch counter.

"Hi, Normal."

"So you're back." Normal said without looking him in the eye. “Sorry to say that I filled your slot weeks ago.”

Alec shifted, his skin prickling when a fight between two riders at the exit turned into a shoving match. Every voice around him was clear and individual, every whisper loud in his ears. Just getting downtown had played havoc with his raw senses but he couldn’t stand one more silent night alone in his apartment.

"Oh," Alec didn't know what else to say. "I was hoping maybe you'd need some part time maybe?"

"Part time?" Normal clicked his tongue.

He’d left Logan’s days ago, unable to watch when the lights had been turned off for him or the sight of carefully cooked dinners he could barely touch. The looks and constant questions weren't made any easier by that doctor that always touched him like he was her own private lab animal. He’d never liked being available for anyone when they needed him. At least, after he realized he had a choice whether he wanted to be or not. One of the gifts of freedom was being able to vanish if you wanted to.

So he did.

“I-I could really use a job.” Alec heard himself say.

Normal’s gaze flickered up at him over his clipboard.

“Where’s your bike?”

Alec felt his grip on the counter tighten and he tried to smile, but it wouldn’t come on command like usual. He hadn’t had any time to get back into any of his games, all of that had spun to a stop or out of his reach without him anyway. He was completely broke and the first thing he noticed was gone, when he started noticing anything at all, was his ride.

“I’ve been- I’ve been away. It was outside my apartment. It got jacked.”

His ride wasn’t all that was missing. His entire apartment had been picked through, the door hanging off its hinges when he walked back through it. His stereo and anything that had resale value was gone. Books. Dishes. Booze. Even that cheap radio in the bathroom.

But most things outside of his own sphere of his life were left just as exactly he saw them last.

Jam Pony sure hadn’t changed much.

Someone bumped into him hard as they hurried by, shoving him into a stack of packages that toppled over onto the dispatch floor. Alec stared down at them, knowing that he should have been able to stop himself from almost being knocked over the counter with them. His heart was beating too hard. He started to get dizzy, his empty stomach churning with the rise and fall of the room's noise. He shouldn’t have come. He was so fucking stupid. He should have waited a few more days, maybe tried to reach out to his contacts he had down dockside. Maybe he could scrape up enough to start bribing a few of the harbor security again for some access to what came in on those cargo carriers over from Japan—

“You okay, Alec?”

Normal was looking at him full on now, the set to his features filled with open and genuine concern. Alec knew he must really look fucked up if Normal was looking at him like that. His smile came as required this time but Alec had no idea what the hell it might have looked like.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” he managed. “Rough few months.”

Normal studied him a moment longer before nodding. "Gimme a few minutes would ya?"

"Sure."

"You-You can wait in my office if you want. There's coffee in there that might still be warm."

Alec felt his smile come a little easier. "Thanks."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Normal had told him to wait around so he did.

Things started to slow down a little bit after the accident down town had been cleared and everyone’s runs had been sorted out. The five o’clock rush came and went and Normal left the desk to one of the riders that looked the least likely to commit suicide if they were left alone for more than ten minutes.

The back office was messy in an organized methodical kind of way.

Alec heard himself explain how he’d been offered a job out in New York but it hadn’t worked out. As soon as it left his mouth he remembered Max had said something about him joining a band. A band? Alec stared hard at the floor and tried to keep going. It was his cousin you see and Alec had owed him a few favors so when he asked, Alec had no choice but to go. He was really sorry he hadn’t given in any kind of warning or notice but Normal knew how crazy these things could be right?

Normal listened to his line of bullshit with more patience and for much longer than Alec expected. When Alec ran out of things to say he played with his hands in the ensuing silence and wondered if he should add a trip to Europe complete with a stolen passport in there too.

His former boss crossed and uncrossed his legs several times before removing his glasses and giving a good rub between the eyes. When he finally spoke, Alec was prepared to be sent out the door. Told to hit the street and never show his face around here again. In a city like this, Alec was a dime a dozen. Less even. There was an army of kids out there willing to work longer and harder than he had ever done for this place.

“There’s a bike out back," Normal said. "It’s in the alley chained up.”

Alec realized he had been holding his breath.

“At least it was the last time I was back there,” Normal shrugged with a tired roll of his eyes. “It needs a new chain and the brakes are shot.”

Alec shifted in his seat, suddenly swallowing back whatever it was that he had left to say. He could find a new chain no problem and the brakes he could fix.

Slipping a hand out from his back pocket, Normal slid a wad of cash over on the desk and nodded down at it.

Alec stared at the money. It wasn’t a lot but it was enough to maybe put a few things in that small empty fridge in his apartment. Maybe even buy a new chain instead of lifting one like he had already planned. He couldn’t find it in him to go out at night to fence and steal. Cajole or distract. Conjure and lie. He was just so tired.

“You’ll pay me back, all of it, right out of your check.”

Alec watched himself take it with a numb hand. He wondered what Normal thought he’d actually done. Gotten messed up with drugs. Blanked out for a month until he got homeless and then remembered his old job. Dragged his self back on the outside chance that his boss would give him a break.

“Try to get a few nights of sleep would ya?” Normal said softly. “You look—you look like you could use a few nights sleep.”

Alec looked back up and tried as hard as he could not to start babbling some incoherent stream of thanks. He was so grateful his eyes burned. He didn’t trust himself to speak without his voice breaking into pieces. Normal didn’t have to do this. Didn’t have to make this easy or nice in any way.

“Come in on Monday,” Normal pulled back on his glasses. “Early.”

“S-Sure thing boss.”

When Alec heard the door close behind him he thought maybe now that the hardest part was over. He couldn’t even meet the eyes of anyone that brushed by him. Maybe after some time he could lift his chin a little higher, maybe even reply to the tentative greetings and the distant sounds of questions that he knew were being addressed to him. The money burned in his hand, down in his pocket, hidden from sight.

He just wanted to get out of there, take the long walk back to his apartment and just sit in some silence for a while. It was only Friday but he’d come back tomorrow and take a look at that bike Normal said was rotting out back. It would be good to just work his days away until he was so tired he could barely pedal back up that ramp one more time. It used to take a lot to tire a guy like him out but maybe not so much these days.

Alec worked his shoulder over on his sore side, the side where he had been shot twice. His flesh had all healed but his muscles still didn’t feel like they were all entirely his yet. His entire body seemed like it belonged to someone else.

The cold rain that splattered down onto his face caused him to look up around at the world again. The gray sky was low with saturated clouds. It hadn’t stopped raining for days. Alec kind of hoped it wouldn’t stop anytime soon. It made it easier to hide himself away. It made easing into sleep at any hour of the day more simple and excusable—

Alec walked smack right into someone.

“I’m-I’m sorry.” He automatically said, bending down to pick up the things that had been dropped down onto the wet pavement.

When he stood up with the wet leather handbag, he met the woman he’d nearly knocked over right in the eyes. At first he thought she was angry, the typical but half-hearted fury of the average pedestrian being interrupted by anything and anyone. But she wasn’t angry; she was staring at him with one of those looks. It was as if she was trying to remember his name or his face from somewhere else.

Alec blinked at her.

He knew for a fact that he’d never seen her before in his lifetime. She was older, with carefully wound hair dyed into whatever shade of blond was popular at the moment. She was tall too, almost looking him in the eyes. She was dressed nicely. Too nice for this part of town and much too nice for the sector. Looking up briefly at her expensive umbrella with a glossy wooden handle and down at her knee-high suede boots, Alec wondered if maybe she’d gotten herself lost.

He had forgotten he was still holding her bag.

“Thank you.” She murmured, taking it quickly from his hands. “Do-Do you work here?”

Alec blinked again, looking up at the dripping metal sign above them that had seen better days.

“Uh, yeah?” He supposed he did.

“Does it run everyday?”

“Yeah. Best service in town.” Alec added with a small forced grin. "Probably."

The woman gave him a hesitant smile back and looked uncertainly down the crowded ramp down into the cellar’s depths.

“Most people just call their stuff in,” Alec heard himself explaining as he looked back down into the dismal appearance of what was Jam Pony. “They don’t usually come all the way down—"

The woman had gone.

Alec watched her as she merged and disappeared into the mass of people that moved away across the street as the light changed. He let people bump and push against him as he stood still amidst the bustling flow. He was still watching when the light switched from green to red. He couldn’t spot her black umbrella out of the hundreds that were moving back and forth under the masses of people who carried them. Alec thought he might have been wrong.

He may have never met her but she did look a little familiar.

Somehow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Along with Jam Pony and his moldy apartment furniture, Crash also appeared to have not changed at all during his absence.

It felt a little wrong to put some of Normal’s money down for a stiff drink but Normal wanted him to get himself together didn’t he? Alcohol would do more towards that than anything else Alec could come up with at the moment. He was glad the bartender was new and didn’t know his face. He had almost not made it through the front door because of the thought of the people who would ask him where he’d gone. Max had told him what she had spread around; the gig out east, new job, some girl and all that shit.

A few faces appeared at his side before he’d even finished his first drink. Slightly out of concern and greeting, but mostly to see if he was dealing the drugs they usually came to him for before he made his vanishing act all those weeks ago. He assured him he’d be up and running again soon. He wasn’t sure if he meant it. It seemed to take all his energy just to sit there and lift the glass to his lips.

Alec hadn’t had a drink in a long time. He hadn’t really wanted one. His mind had been so clouded with drugs for so long and so hard that it was a fresh new confusion just to be clear of them for the first time.

It was also a little bit too much.

“Back out in the world of the living?”

Max slid onto the stool next to him.

Alec took another burning sip. “Just celebrating, that’s all.”

“Oh yeah?”

Alec held his glass up to her.

“Got my job back.”

Max held up her much more substantial beer.

“Don’t know why yer celebrating, but sure.”

Alec wanted to smile at her joke but he couldn’t. He could see her eyeing his drink. He could see her holding back what she would eventually end up just saying anyway.

He cut her off at the pass by speaking first.

“Tell Logan again, tell ‘em I said thanks.”

It was lame and he knew it, but he couldn’t imagine himself seeing Logan again any time soon. Not for a real long time. It was tough enough trying to have something to say to Max. Even after everything they’d done for him, he couldn’t bear to think of everything he’d done to them. Everything they’d seen him do. Everything he’d turned into.

Alec cleared his throat.

“When I get some money saved up, tell him I’ll send something his way, you know, for everything—“

“You know you don’t have to do that Alec.” Max said, pulling a rogue strand of hair behind her ear.

“That doctor alone…” Alec felt his grip on his glass grow too hard, his knuckles turning white as he fought to make himself relax. The pretty Indian woman that checked in on him everyday wasn’t from some street clinic. She was the real deal and the real deal got paid for their troubles no matter how exotic the specimen happened to be. “That doctor alone Max, it must have cost him—“

“Alec.” Her hand lay firm on his arm. “It’s not like that.”

She’d lowered her voice and looked at him with that… look. Just like everyone who had dared make eye contact him down at Jam Pony had done. Just like Normal had done, and Normal didn’t even know a damn thing that had happened. Alec figured he must just look like something that just dragged itself bleeding through the back door. He gritted his teeth and gulped down what was left in his glass.

Maybe it was why that woman on the street had looked at him like she had. Surprise mixed with worry. Maybe even startled. Alec shook his head, unsure of why that lady had popped back into his thoughts in the first place.

“What’s wrong?”

Her dark eyes held back all the questions she really wanted to drown him in. Was he keeping it together? Was he better off the drugs than on them? Should she let him roam these city streets alone? Was Alec sane?

“What could be wrong?” Alec stood and tossed a few more bills on the bar. “I got a job, I got a roof over my head, hell, by Monday I’ll even have some wheels.“

“Just try to stop by Logan’s when you can.”

Alec stopped, swallowing back the lump of sickening dread sitting in his throat. But he managed to shrug.

“If I get the chance, I’m goin’ to be pretty busy for while--”

“Do it soon Alec,” Max urged him. “He might have some info for you that you might be needing now. Now that yer out and about.”

Alec pulled on his jacket, the booze singing nicely through his blood now, faster than it usually ever had.

“Unless it’s about old Ames, I think I know enough to last me a while Max.” He told her.

“Just promise me you will.”

Alec left her promise hanging there unanswered as he shouldered aside some drunks lingering by the stairs. He wasn’t in any position to promise anyone anything. In fact the only thing he knew for certain was just exactly where he’d be first thing on Monday morning. And that was in the back of Jam Pony’s alley fixing up some wreck so he could get started back into his life again.

Other than that, Alec couldn’t honestly tell a soul otherwise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first week of work hit him harder than he thought it would.

It showed in his run times, his lag during the first day causing a schedule bump for two other riders to pick up his slack for the day. The physical exercise that had been near effortless to him before was now a struggle. Each steep road and steady rising grade making his lungs burn and his skin break out into a cold sweat. The bike he’d salvaged didn’t help matters much. Despite Normal’s charity, the thing was old, and even with a new chain it took about twice as much man power to get the thing going than his old ride had.

But he didn’t complain. He apologized when by the third day he still couldn’t finish his allotted drop offs, but by the fourth day Normal made a few changes. He eased off on Alec’s routes and gave him something close to what the average courier was expected to accomplish in one day instead of two. The first day Alec finally got the last signature for his very last assignment felt better than anything had in a long time. The cheap security system he spotted alongside the four-car garage did a little something to brighten his mood too.

The man signing for his package mistook his attention to his car collection as actual interest.

“Restored them all myself!” The poor guy provided proudly. “You have no idea what it cost to get all the original parts together.”

Alec was pretty sure he could get a pretty good idea by at least the end of next week.

When he got home that night he felt, for the first time in a long time, different. He wasn’t looking over his shoulder everywhere he walked. He wasn’t obsessively checking his new cell phone for strange numbers. His door had long been fixed, but he now always locked it after he entered, sliding in a new chain that hadn’t been there before. Although, what he thought it was keeping out he wasn’t quite sure. None of it made much sense considering how they had gotten to him the last time.

Alec slumped down onto his sofa with a sigh.

Logan had told him the same thing every day he spent laid up in his bed.

There’s no sign of them Alec. I think we got away with it. I think we really walked right in and out of there and we got away with it.

Seattle was a crowded city. Alec watched it glitter from the window where his television used to be. The town fed and housed millions of people. But it didn’t mean Ames wouldn’t try his hand again. Alec couldn’t say a ton of positive things about the guy but he could admit that he was nothing if not persistent.

But what if when he tried there was nothing left here in Seattle to find?

Alec could live out the story Max had configured and take off any night he wanted. He had enough paperwork to get him over to the east coast. And from there he had enough smarts of how to get anything else he needed to get right up to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean if that’s where he wanted to be. But Alec knew it didn’t matter where he went.

It was as safe here long among the crowds than it would anywhere else. He just had to settle back down into what his life was before any of this had ever happened.

He just had to get everything back to normal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You still here?”

Alec smiled at Cindy.

She was soaking wet with the rain, mud splattered up her sides and had about as many tips as there were smiles on their customers faces that day. But she still had hers, bright and easy, wide and welcoming.

“People are gonna start thinkin’ ya live here.”

“It’d be a step up.” Alec assured her.

It was going on almost a quarter hour past official stop shop time but Normal sometimes stretched the rules for customers willing to pay for it. And consequentially the ones willing to pay for extra service usually tipped better than any rider ever deserved considering the treatment their package got.

“Clean yourself up a little bit,” Normal muttered at his paperwork as he scribbled. “This is for Sector 12.

“Gotta hot run.” Alec informed Cindy, using the right air of the mysterious when he pointed at the ordinary wrapped box that Normal was busy filling out the last of the billing slip.

“Lucky you,” Cindy yawned. “Don’t sprain anything important on yer way out there.”

“I’ll try.”

Alec watched her leave and sighed at the empty room.

“Remember to smile,” Normal told him. “And for god’s sake don’t spit anywhere, these people always have cameras all over the place."

“Gotcha.” Alec slipped the box into his waterproof backpack. “Smile. No Spitting.”

As he pedaled out into the cold he wondered just exactly when he’d finally manage to get back to his own sector. There were some phone calls he wanted to make that he hadn’t bothered with in a long time. A few people that he thought might still owe him some cash and he might settle for a trade in services rendered. What he needed was someone who could strip four vintage cars and sell them out of state.

The thought cheered him up as his tired legs started to burn again with the strain. It took him almost a half an hour to get there but when he finally reached the checkpoint there wasn’t much of a line. The sector check cop reluctantly waved him along into one of the richest sectors of the city without so much of a second glance.

Sailing through the first bank of red lights on the far less cluttered streets, he checked the address one more time before turning onto the steepest hill he’d encountered all day. Standing up on the pedals and forcing his body to work, he started thinking harder about that cheap security system on that fancy garage. It made him a little sad to think of that happy guy’s face when he opened up that showroom of his and found nothing but old oil stains on his white cement floors.

But not that sad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The house, like many of it peers in this sector of the city, had its own well-lit road.

He was stopped at a guarded gate that he figured would be the end of his journey, but the guard wouldn’t sign for it.

“Go on up to the house.” The uniformed man told him before sitting back in front of his small satellite television.

Alec took his time, the solider inside him noting the poorly hidden surveillance cameras that lined the route. The owner of this house didn’t want to keep it any secret that the place was defended like a small fortress. He hit two more manned gates before he even saw the house itself. Waiting with weary curiosity at the back door, a uniformed woman eventually opened it. She didn’t invite him in. He was exhausted, he just wanted her pen on his clipboard, the tip and then just get the hell out of here.

“You’re supposed to open the box here.” She informed him in clipped English. "Right now."

“Excuse me?” Alec asked.

“The box,” The woman gestured to the one he was holding in his gloved hand. “Open it.”

The three cameras that were mounted around the back door all buzzed to life and turned in their direction. Alec looked up into them imagining whomever it was that sat on the other end of the close circuit monitors, watching and waiting for him to do as he was instructed. The idea that anyone may be enjoying his unease made him suddenly angry. Flashes of other cameras in other places blinked through his head. Being watched. Monitored. Studied. He looked down in frustration at the box he had come all this way to hand over.

Alec shrugged and roughly ripped the cord that sealed the package closed. The box seemed empty until he slid it to its side and a small weight clanked noisily out and landed in the palm of his hand.

It was a ring of keys.

“Wh-what’s this?” Alec glanced back at the camera. When no answer seemed to be forthcoming, he shoved the keys back into the box. “Look, I’ll just need a signature ma’am, and then I’ll be–“

The woman hastily signed his clipboard and then gestured behind him to the darkened roundabout driveway he had passed.

“It’s over there,” she said curtly. “Just take it and leave.”

Alec stepped back with his bike as the door slammed closed, the small dim lamp overhead going out as he heard all dozen locks cycle closed. Confounded as to what had just happened, he turned his attention on the finely raked gravel driveway the woman had pointed at. There was something there, parked in the darkness. As he got closer he realized what it was and stopped.

It was a motorcycle.

Not just any motorcycle; a brand new import. One of the newest Japanese hybrids that the bored rich kids raced for kicks down by the water. This thing looked like it had more horsepower than any city street knew what to do with. Dual exhausts jutted out like weapons, its chrome body sleek and stylized to look as powerful as it actually was. It sat solid and impressive, sparkling with beads of rain.

Alec blinked back down at the keys that rattled alone in the large box.

This was for him?

It had to be some kind of crazy mistake. Alec had never been given a thing in his life. Whoever sent this package had obviously gotten themselves all sorts of mixed up. Alec laid the box up against the pricey motorcycle and backed away to his own ratty bike. Checking the signature one more time, he flipped it closed and shoved the clipboard into his backpack. So much for coming all this way for some glorious tip. He looked back at the motorcycle over his shoulder. For more than a few moments he considered just taking the thing. Slipping in those keys and taking that small fortune on wheels straight down to a chop shop so he could pay his rent that was overdue by several months. Use the proceeds to score another bike that didn’t make his shoulders ache from being the completely wrong-shaped frame.

Alec started pedaling.

The last thing he needed was to take another few bullets at the sector check trying to take stolen property across the border. The road wasn’t lit when he rode down it a second time. The small red lights on the cameras were the only indication there was anyone watching his departure. By the time he finally reached the sector point, his dull annoyance was full-fledged anger. If it wasn’t a mistake than who the hell would go ahead and waste his time like that? Was it supposed to be some kind of fucking joke? It wasn’t until he’d made it two sectors over and had his dimly lit building in sight that he remembered the maid had given him a name.

While he waited for the elevator, he flipped through his receipts until he found his last run’s information. The addressee had been what those types of places usually had, some household employee who was required to sign for anything for the actual house owners. Sometimes the real person under all the paperwork was never even mentioned; but not this time. It was there in the fine print under the insurance clause.

Alec made a face.

The name didn’t mean anything to him but that didn’t mean a whole lot in a world where you could change a name as easily as a phone number. Snapping the folder closed, he decided that he would do good on Max’s promise after all. He’d stop by Logan’s place between runs tomorrow. Maybe he’d find out if Logan had heard anything on any of the high-speed cable grapevines.

Slamming the elevator’s gate closed, he sighed. If Alec was lucky, Logan wouldn’t ask him anything but how the weather had been.

He wasn’t up for much more than that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Gaboriault?” Logan asked with an eyebrow raised. “As in the Fairfield, Gaboriaults?”

He watched Alec shrug.

That was a gesture Logan knew well enough. Max did it all the time. She would appear with small snatches of information. Assumptions. A hunch. It always embarrassed her a little bit whenever he asked her beyond the small detail that had been provided. As if what she asked for may be ridiculous or a waste of time.

It seemed like Alec had a similar reaction to his gut instincts.

As usual, Logan hadn’t been expecting him to drop on by. Transgenics didn’t often announce themselves very well. They demanded time and attention with childlike expectation. They waited and listened carefully for your response in much the same way. There was something about it, in all the transgenics he had met, whether he had liked them or not, that caused him to treat them delicately.

“My family,” Logan began,”… they used to mix with another particularly well off clan called the Gaboriaults. Third generation Americans I think. Originally from right outside of Toulouse.”

He knew all that without even looking once at his computer. Logan sighed and wondered what other almost meaningless information his brain contained from his years when all that kind of thing was the only thing that mattered. Social politics. Family surnames and addresses in the right parts of town.

“Anyway,” Logan shrugged it all off. “Why do you ask?”

It was good to see Alec but he didn’t say so. There was something in the way Alec had appeared, nervous and edgy, that made it clear that the visit wasn’t intended for anything but information gathering. It was no time for catching up on old times. Or asking how the reconstruction of Logan’s bathroom was coming along, or well, anything at all that might even indicate what had occurred within the last few months.

The transgenic composed himself together long enough to speak.

"Max said, she said you had some info for me, about,” Alec looked around for the hundredth time, not sure if he should sit or continue standing. “… about me getting out I guess.”

Logan wheeled himself closer to the living room where the X5 was pacing.

“I hope it didn’t alarm you,” He said. “It’s nothing real solid just some well, I hope you’ll think it’s some good advice.”

“Advice?”

“Well, before White found you again you were MIA. X5-494 was considered as good as gone in most of their active work files. Your status was deemed ‘unrecoverable’.”

Alec sat down carefully on the leather couch and looked out at the cityscape.

“White put you back into their active files. They know you’re out there so to speak. You are officially back on their map. But they just don’t know where or when or how…”

“White,” Alec stared hard out the window. “Any word on whether he’s still alive?”

“I don’t know.” Logan shook his head. “Nothing’s come my way to suggest either possibility.”

It was quiet for a moment, nothing but the sound of the rain drumming against Logan’s windows. In a way, looking at Alec now, Logan found he had missed his presence when he had stayed for his slow recovery in this house. The subdued quiet person that slept for hours in his room and sat for even longer out here with the books without ever reading any had been a strange kind of company. Logan hadn’t realized how quickly he’d become accustomed to it.

It was only when Logan had started to ask him questions did his stay suddenly and abruptly end. He realized now what this visit was costing the transgenic. The presence of his anxiety and shame were almost as profound as his engineered scent had once been.

He found himself at a loss, just as he was most of the time with Max. Wanting so badly to say anything at all and knowing that anything at all would be exactly what they didn’t want to hear.

“This family, the Gaboriaults?” Alec asked in a strange voice. “Do you know if they have connections with any government? With Manticore maybe?”

Logan blinked.

“As far as I know the majority of them are living off hedge funds and spend most of their time going in and out of rehabs.”

Alec stopped pretending to admire the skyline. Some kind of tension he was holding onto was gone. Logan recognized it as being some kind of hesitant relief.

Logan tilted his head. “Why are you asking about the Gaboriaults?”

Alec stood up and zipped up the front of his jacket.

“So what’s your advice?”

Logan sighed.

“My advice is to just be careful. More than careful, just--just watch yourself?”

“Sure.” Alec nodded curtly. “See ya Logan.”

“And Alec?”

Alec paused on his way towards the door, his face pained with the anticipation of any question Logan may have regarding him about anything at all.

“I heard about your job,” Logan gave him a small smile. “That’s great.”

“Yeah,” Alec returned a weaker version of the same. “Thanks.”

And just like he came, he was gone again.

Logan stared at the spot on the sofa where Alec had been sitting for a few moments before he turned to his terminal. Keying the various passwords that would get him on the nationwide phone grid, he sat back and waited for the window to fill with the coded national database of everyone in country that owned a telephone.

Gaboriault wasn’t that common of a name in the United States. Therefore it was no surprise when he quickly got back only a few returns listed all under private and locked numbers. As he suspected, they were all mostly all confined to the Atlantic northeast. But one listed number did surprise him. It was the very last one.

It was right here in Seattle.

“Elaine?” He murmured to himself.

Logan knew of three generations of the Gaboriault family. He knew married cousin surnames and even the names of their grandchildren’s boats. But he had never heard of any Elaine Gaboriault. Maybe she wasn’t a member of the family at all? With a small frown, he keyed in the address and what little else the database contained. Logan whistled. With an address like that in that sector alone, this woman had to have some kind of money. And she’d use plenty of it to protect what she had. With a sinking feeling Logan considered just exactly why Alec had been so interested in this name. Maybe he was trying to make some extra income the old fashioned way.

But why had he asked about any connection with Manticore?

Logan slipped on his headset and autodialed a number, activating his webcam at the same time. A familiar face popped up in the field.

“Hey Sebastian, you busy?”

Nope. Just playing Tetris.

Logan gave a tired smile at the man on his screen.

“I need to know a few things about someone.”

You’ll have to be a little bit more specific.

Logan smiled again.

“I need to know how a certain Seattle resident came across her good fortune.”

Let me guess? You don’t think it was the lottery?

“Something like that…”

While Logan waited, he picked up his cell phone and dialed Max’s pager. The only other person he knew that knew anything at all about Alec’s life was her. If Alec was about to try to rob some heiress with about as much fence as any national mint she might be in the know.

And if Max wasn’t, she certainly should be.

tbc


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prequel to Heat: Reading it would help. A bit.  
> here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14459901/chapters/33404712

Alec was dreaming again.

He didn’t have to touch a door to know if there was fire on the other side.

The desperate men that hunched over lab sinks soaking their white jackets to cover their mouths gave him no notice. There were too busy scrambling to the floor where the smoke was weakest, heading for the exits they should know by heart from the weekly drills. Alec stood and watched them calmly, knowing this place buried deep under the ground was already in ashes. He was just a phantom this time. A visitor in his own mind that played his memories back like poorly edited film. All the colors were too vivid for his enhanced retinas, the sounds too faint to be a reality for his hyper aware senses.

The walls flashed brightly with the crackling orange of fire. Smoke roiled thick and oily across the ceiling, rushing down to cover his face. It filled his lungs, heavy and burning, choking him as each breath became harder to draw in than the next. Reaching out in detached curiosity, he expected his flesh to meet and wither in the scorching flames hidden by the smoke. Instead, he felt his hand pass sluggishly through water. The blistering darkness receded rapidly until the light that once roared red with flame was now cool and blue.

He refocused in the blurred water that was tainted pink by his own blood.

Ice seeped in a fine network of lace over his skin, the weight in his lungs turning into a flood of frigid liquid. Pushing his hands outwards he found only solid walls on every side. His mouth opened, reflex sending a bubble drifting above his head, catching whatever faint light it could from the distant surface. But there was no bottom to his prison, and scrambling for purchase he felt himself sink and sink, the black below swallowing him until there was nothing left but the slowing uneven beat of his heart—

Alec opened his eyes to the cracked plaster overhead.

For one horrible moment he was the same as he had been all those weeks ago, alone in the stifling half light of his room, slick with a cold sweat and his chest heaving. Reassuring himself with the feel of his own sheets and the sight of the four walls, he steadily had to remember that the heat had long since burned out. His mind had been tempered back to what passed for his normal. If he allowed himself to breathe he could do it without the fear that the world would rush up relentlessly against his vulnerable senses. Checking a hand to see if it was shaking, he frowned when he saw that it was trembling more than just a little. Making a fist, he flexed and released it until it went away.

He turned towards the open window and the soaked wooden pane that had slowly collected the night’s steady rain fall. A humid stray breeze breathed through the frame, meeting his face and stirring his damp hair. The familiar echo of the early morning traffic seemed too far away.

Alec rubbed his face and slowly sat up.

Glancing at his clock he saw he had woken up exactly 14 minutes later than he had intended. He had never had to worry about over sleeping before in his lifetime. Not like he did now. His body demanded more rest than it ever had. It was still dark outside the window, dawn over an hour away. Unwilling to linger in the dark of his quiet apartment he got up quickly and searched for his clothes.

Catching sight of his side in the mirror, he briefly studied the pale blotchy patchwork that had smoothed over his swiftly vanishing scars. In a few weeks there would be even less to look at. A few more after that and no one would ever know that a couple of bullets had almost ripped him in half. For the first time, Alec was glad that the proof on his flesh wouldn’t stain for life like anyone else. He pulled his shirt on and let himself experience the pleasant warmth it provided on his chilled skin.

Another look at the hour made up his mind. He might as well make a good impression at work by getting in early. Even though he’d been back for a while it still didn’t quite feel like it.

Nowadays it felt like every morning was his first day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Normal didn’t say anything when he pulled up the corrugated steel door and saw Alec standing there leaning against the wall.

Alec wordlessly followed his boss back inside, the overhead television on with a low murmur of the beginning of the day’s traffic disasters. The roster screen flickered to life as Normal punched on the computer behind the dispatch desk. Pulling the top off a steaming cup of coffee, he took a seat and gave his peculiarly prompt employee a look.

Alec shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Normal nudged forward a grease stained container of donuts while he grabbed a chocolate glazed one for himself. Perking slightly, Alec selected a plain unadorned roll to stash in a jacket pocket and then took the messiest fried glob leaking jelly for his immediate breakfast use. Half awake, Normal sipped hot caffeine and brought up the day’s schedule. Alec looked up at it and scanned it quickly for his name.

“Uh, I’m not up there—“

“I was wondering if you could go to Sector 7 today.”

Alec felt his eyebrows rise. No one went around there unless they wanted to score and if they wanted it that bad they went with a loaded weapon. It wasn’t that he was specifically opposed to that part of town but it just wasn’t a place that usually demanded services of the courier business. Normal, over the course of Alec’s employment, had noticed an ability and willingness to deal with situations and neighborhoods he couldn’t pay the other riders enough to take on.

It made Alec think of the run he had done a few nights back out among the isolated sprawl of the city’s elite.

“Hey, Normal?”

“If you don’t want it, I can hand it over to Max—“

“No, no. Hey, Sector 7! I love Sector 7.” Alec rubbed at the back of his head. “I was just wonderin’ about that call out to 12?”

“What about it?” Normal paused on the last of his donut.

“Did someone ask for… for—“ he suddenly stopped, feeling like some suspicious freak. “It’s nothing. Never mind.”

Normal adjusted his headset as the phone bank started to light up even though they still weren’t officially open yet.

“Customer made a big deal about asking for my fastest guy.” Normal said as he watched the automatic holding system tidy all the red hectic lights to a mellow green. “That happens to be you.”

Alec slowly sorted through the packages on the counter that were marked for him. He set the tone of his voice as casually as he could.

“Max is as fast as me.”

“It was her day off.” Normal glanced up at him with that look again. “Is there a problem?”

“Nope.”

Getting back up on his bike, Alec balanced his bag with his weight before the brief steep departure up the rusty ramp. A glance at the clouds told him more of the rain that had drizzled all night long was still on its way. He didn’t mind. Weather in any kind of extreme had never really bothered him much. If anything, after a few good hills a nice down pour would be downright refreshing. His thoughts turned worriedly towards whenever it would be that he would be able to pause long enough for lunch.

As long as that donut stashed in his pocket stayed mostly dry, then he really had no problems at all.

 

 

 

 

 

Lucky Sector 7 reminded Alec of the limited amount of monitored television they were allowed to view while back at Manticore.

In the early years there had been a lot of care to show what the temptations of the outside world truly had to offer exceptional and privileged children such as themselves. The men and women in the white coats never used those particular words of course but they made it very clear. Everyone on the outside was rotting somewhere on the spectrum of humanity’s disease. There had been a comfort sometimes when the horrific video streams were shut off and the lights turned back on. There had been small shared looks exchanged with his assembled peers of some kind of relief. They would never be like those wide eyed bloated children who stood with blank stares out in the streets. They would never age a decade in just one summer by saturating their bloodstream with the cheapest narcotics they could find. They had been chosen and protected.

That was the spin anyway.

Sparing only a thread of his concentration on his bike’s path, he caught sight of a busted stop light almost too late to do much about it. Failing to see a four way intersection was stuck in a permanent green position he had to bank hard on the curb edge to avoid rolling right into traffic. Nearly being flattened by a truck hauling a badly hitched wrecked car woke him right the hell up. It also made him realize that he had arrived right at the corner street required.

It was kind of a famous street for a lot of bad reasons. The long list of the individuals gunned down along the sidewalks were a real who’s who of the city. Or at least they had been when they were alive.

Alec didn’t bother chaining up his bike outside the recessed entryway. When he saw the impatient man inside waiting at the counter, he had to grin when he saw what it was that he had been sent all this way to retrieve. Especially on one of the few streets in all of the city that the police didn’t even visit unless they had an armored convoy. Even on his more conventional runs Alec didn’t always see flowers.

Trying not to smash his new delicate parcel, he held them to his face to feel the soft petals more than to catch the pleasant smell his senses already received in full volume. The soon owner of the Queen Anne’s lace and assorted daisies was only a few blocks away. When he looked around to see if his bike survived the five minute absence, he stopped in his tracks.

“Nice flowers.”

“Thanks.” Alec smiled.

Feeling gregarious, he pulled one from the bunch and offered the stray miniature sunflower to the tall barrel chested man with double fisted pistols.

“Where you been?”

Alec knew he would run into some old friends around this block. It was inevitable. He just didn’t think he’d run into the one and only guy on the planet that didn’t owe him money. In fact, this gentlemen was owed quite a substantial sum which Alec had once upon a time been on his way to making good on. But at the moment this thug with his twenty word vocabulary yet razor keen accounting skills had been the furthest thing on Alec’s mind.

He decided to play dumb.

“I think you got me confused with someone else you see I just moved here over from New York and—“

“Heard you were back.” The man interrupted, glancing down at the beat up bicycle and the worn strap on his backpack. “Heard you were back up on the Pony.”

So much for feigning incognito. Why the hell did everyone who was owed a few thousand grand always seem to remember him so well anyway? One of his instructors long ago had once quietly mentioned in passing to another handler that Alec had been very forgettable. At the time the doctor had used a series of numbers and not a name, but Alec had felt some pride at the observation. The offhanded compliment had been one of the first he remembered ever being given by anyone at all. The undistinguished could slip by. The unnoticed could walk in and out and no one would give them a second glance. Anonymity was powerful. With the tasks they had given him it was as vital and important as the weapons he carried. However, ever since he had been set loose in the wide world he started to get the impression that that was just another one of those facts his makers had no real reasonable grasp on. Because all he ever seemed to do these days was smack right into people that couldn’t seem to shake a single fact about him.

“Okay. Yeah. I’m back.” Alec set aside the special expression he used for sincere befuddlement and went for natural. At the moment natural was heartfelt supplication mixed with frayed panic. “So what do you want? Spang? Andy? Maybe some of that new hybrid sticky coming over from Amsterdam—“

“I want my money.”

Alec had no interest in feeling any more bullets tearing through his body again any time soon.

“You got it.” He answered from behind clenched teeth. “I can have it out on the first of the month—“

“I want it next week.”

“That might be a little complicated.” Alec’s grip on his handle bars tightened, hoping his steady smile would buy him some leeway. “I-I just got back into town and my network kinda scattered without any strong supervised guidance if you know what I mean. Most of those guys that were pushing my stuff are nowhere to be found but just so you know I am currently accepting resumes from anyone with 24 to 48 full hours of distribution experience—“

“I want it next week with interest.” The guy idly scratched at his bare shaved temple with one of his semi-automatics. “25%”

“All righty.” He figured he might as well know what his options were. “What happens if I don’t have anything on Friday?”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Yeah.” Alec sighed. “I figured you’d say that.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“So, a horse walks into a bar…”

Alec didn’t have to look sideways to know Max had taken the stool next to him. At least it didn’t appear she was taking up any permanent long term residence, her empty pitcher slid towards the man with the tap. She let her gaze sweep over her shoulder. It was a move like anyone else plausibly checking out the midnight crowd but Alec knew what she was doing. It was a cursory and practically involuntary gesture. She was checking the crowded entrances, blocked exits and the guy that stank like spent gun powder that had walked in eleven minutes ago. None of it ever switched off no matter how many years you could brag about hiding your barcode.

He finished what was left in his glass and acknowledged her waiting expectant smile.

“… and the bartender says, why the long face?”

She nudged him in the side to punctuate what sounded vaguely like a joke.

“That’s a good one.” Alec said even though he didn’t get it. “I’m the horse right?”

“Yup.”

He wanted to tell her all about it.

Alec wanted to tell her that after all the things he’d been through that he was right back into another mire of his own unfathomable making. Sort of. It wasn’t completely his fault that he hadn’t been around much to baby sit the business ventures he’d been cultivating carefully in various hubs of the sectors. It wasn’t entirely his fault that he had been fucking dumb enough to keep drinking tainted tap water provided by a government that wanted him dissected on a wax tray. Alec cracked the knuckles in one hand before he irritably twisted the refilled glass on the bar top. Playing the blame game didn’t really matter at this point. This time he was almost in as much trouble on the street than locked up away in those mountains. The hell Ames had made was just one of the many layers under the real world most people walked around in.

The men that lived the very basic code of the street ethic had a few things besides uncomplicated motivation on their side. The subversive system of the black market had the actual resources to thrive underneath a city like this one. Its vast and faceless array of enforcers could be much more of a threat to Alec’s existence than even Agent White hoped to be. The staggering amount that had to be turned over into plain cash was astronomical. Alec was so unbelievably screwed with the sum of money he’d have to produce in a matter of days that he wasn’t even sure that rushing to heist anything major would work. Even if he stumbled upon an unguarded truck filled with diamond encrusted gold bricks, he’d still have to fence it all off to someone else. That kind of job took time so the municipality bank network didn’t get any blips on their screens. Better yet, the specialists who were the only ones that could make it happen would take one look at his impossible deadline and slam the door in his face.

“Did Logan tell you anymore about whatshername?”

“Gaboriault.” Alec automatically supplied.

But Max’s easy question threw him off his tracks. It made sense that Logan would have mentioned Alec’s strange inquiry to her but it bothered him anyway. It was a small meaningless mystery made up of his paranoia that he wanted to forget having. So much for all that privacy the guy was always so up in arms about. Next time maybe Alec would just stick to the street hackers that didn’t talk to anyone but their paying clients.

“Asked a guy I know that mows lawns out there…” Max tossed down a few bucks for her pitcher. “The place has a brand spanking new AxiumIII system on it.”

“Sounds shiny.” He murmured into his glass.

“Yeah, a defense system like that won’t let even someone like us get real far before the automated artillery kicks in.” Max said. “I was just thinking that if you are planning on robbin’ that joint that you might want to know—“

“Now why would I wanna go and do something stupid like that?”

Max studied him for a moment before she shrugged.

“Have a good night, Alec.”

“Yeah, you too.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alec was getting pretty tired of feeling out the extent of his woes in the shower.

He didn’t plan it or count on it but there was something about the time alone that got him thinking down deeper than he usually liked. He also didn’t want to admit it but the stark blind of the overhead florescent on the white tile still reminded him of another place. There hadn’t been a whole lot of moments in his former life that Alec had equated with peace and relaxation but this brief span of his day had been one of them. Even standing in a crowded row of open showers under the cameras he’d always felt some measure of respite.

The turning whine of the old metal nozzles plunged the bathroom into silence.

Almost.

Alec froze as he realized his front door was being opened. His mind mechanically eliminated the list of possible people that would do something like that. Max’s recognizable tread wasn’t crossing his floor. His landlord’s unmistakable clumsy gait was not what settled to a stop in front of his window. All that simmering fear he’d been patting himself on the back for not keeping him under a blanket all day long came surging up hard enough to make him physically sick. He’d had it. Hands shaking on the sink, he decided he’d had enough of feeling like some kind of pent up prisoner even under the open sky. He wasn’t going to be afraid if he didn’t want to be. Without even a towel, he flung the door back and decided to face whatever it was that had waltzed right into his living room.

Alec paused.

But the person by the broad window wasn’t a stranger at all. In fact, it was the woman Max had just asked about a few hours earlier in the smoky noise of the bar. She was dressed almost exactly as he’d seen her the last time in the street. A smart fitted suit that looked like it cost something. Knee high boots and some designer bag clutched up under her arm. Alec found his voice again to raise his rightful demand over the intrusion. It came out a little less enraged than he’d hoped.

“What-what is this?”

He stepped backwards and felt his anger rise again when his back met the wall. She was some whack job from the pretty side of town and obviously had some kind of mental problems. He felt his mind slide down into its natural defenses, the blank wall of training that let him consider opening up that window to give her the real view—

“Why didn’t you accept my gift?”

He blinked in surprise at the honest question. His startled wary thoughts suddenly shifted to his trip out to her compound in Sector 12. The long bike ride up the closely watched meander of her private road. The package with the set of keys in it. The brand new import sitting in the raked gravel driveway that was there for the taking. All that hassle really had been meant for him?

Alec watched her take a seat in his one and only chair. She took a deep breath and crossed her legs. Her fancy coat and perfectly lacquered nails were out of place with the tattered furniture, shabby rugs and chipped paint on the walls. The meeting with her on the street in front of Jam Pony had been closer but brief, his attention totally scattered with the bewildering gift of his former job back in his hands. But he could get a good look at her now. He could see her true age was masked by a few expensive operations and a regiment of chemical peels. However, the fine lines that creased down around her eyes and mouth betrayed the decades she was trying to conceal. The tired set watery gaze aging her even further beyond that.

“I only want to talk to you.”

Alec realized there was a certain fragile waver to a voice of advanced years. Something delicate as the fine bones under thin skin, the knuckles of her hands pronounced as the nervous flutter in her throat.

“Talk to me?” Alec repeated, his gaze going behind him, waiting for more people to appear silently at his door. There was nothing in the corridor outside but silence. “You came here just to talk to me?”

She nodded.

Alec studied her in confused frustration, his hands working on his stomach as he became painfully aware of how exposed he was. He also noticed how she wasn’t diverting her eyes in any way. Alec wasn’t a modest man but recent circumstances had left him with a new found requirement for some strains of personal space.

“All I am asking for is some time.” She moved a hand into her purse. “I would like to ask you some questions.”

If she was Manticore she wouldn’t have come here all alone like this. Even if she had some armed driver downstairs she would know he could disable her without even trying. Any other possible affiliate would have sent a legion of suited men with tasers and a cage without ever even getting their hands dirty. Showing up and politely asking to have a talk over some coffee just wasn’t how that operation worked. Nothing about her even hinted a thing about the government organization. She was bizarre and different in every sense of the word.

Alec looked her tall frail frame up and down again.

He had heard of women like her he supposed. Sometimes he even saw them drifting in the clubs. Women with too much money that liked something a little bit younger and more malleable at their sides than the overbearing grayed gentlemen that had divorced them for some of the same. But Alec wasn’t one of those well dressed society types these women usually found as escorts. Those kind of guys didn’t live in co-ops one step up from organized squatting. They didn’t wear the cheap clothes he did, and they didn’t actually work for a living.

Alec was enough of a realist to recognize that he wasn’t so appealing to deserve this kind of attention. An extremely wealthy woman like this one could have just about anything she wanted. But maybe she was one of those types that liked to slum it. Show off how she liked to wallow in the city’s dirt for fun. Maybe not even to show off at all. Maybe this was her dirty little secret that she liked a boy that hadn’t seen the inside of an ivy league school and wouldn’t get anywhere or get much of anything within the span of his lifetime.

Whoever and whatever she wanted, the whole thing turned his stomach.

“You got some pretty lousy timing mam.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look lady, not that I’m not flattered? In fact, if you caught me about a month ago this would all be a done deal, but I don’t hustle for cash—“

“Let’s try not to be disgusting.” Her jaw twitched as she swallowed.

The fresh crisp clean stack of bills she causally placed on his coffee table made his next protest die in his throat. Alec pulled on the boxer shorts that were sitting on his bed. The jeans came on next. With a sigh, he sat down opposite her on the sofa and held out his hands.

“Just want to talk huh?” Alec heard the defeat in his voice.

She smiled and the pleased warmth of it took a few of those barely hidden years off of her face. There was also some satisfaction behind it that was as odd as every other comfortable nuance of her body language. His gaze flickered back down on the wad of cash. Alec knew enough to know that nothing quite that substantial came simple. But this woman wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb on the branch. She had walked into one of the shiftiest buildings on the block with probably nothing but a can of mace in her bag. Alec had seen the privileged move around with an extraordinary faith that the decent didn’t get a fist to the jaw just for the chance to get at a nice watch. Maybe playing along would be just what it looked like. A ridiculous game she could play because she had the disposable cash to engage in any crazy recreation she wanted. He watched her pull out a small electronic notepad and flip it on.

“First, tell me your name.”

That was an easy one.

“Alec.” He sat back and crossed his arms self consciously over his bare chest. “That’s with a C, not an X.”

“Your full name?”

“That’s all there is.” He responded more curtly then he intended.

She didn’t question it like he thought she might have. Should have. Instead she just quickly typed something into her notes. He fidgeted in his seat, wondering what all the extra typing and silence was about. Briefly, he entertained the gratifying notion of making all her slum dreams come true by standing up and knocking her and the compact electronic device onto the floor.

The idea of the possibilities all within his realm of control made him relax a little.

But it didn’t take a genius to know that this was all a terrible idea. After everything that had just happened he had no business getting messed up in whatever the hell it was that this weird nosy lady wanted. Nonetheless, next week was coming up fast and Sector 7 wasn’t under any current city planning ordinances for demolition. Alec looked back at the heap of money and sighed. Whether he liked it or not, he had one bitch of a pressing deadline to meet.

It just so happened that as usual, his choices never felt like much of a choice.

tbc


	3. Chapter 3

Alec didn’t feel so great.

It wasn't as if the daily streams that broadcasted the bleak world news were giving him the blues. Nor was it the fact that the rent was three months late. The lingering threat of his astounding balance due, he had to admit, had put a permanent sour feeling in stomach but his current state of craptastic was surprisingly unrelated to any of those things.

At least he had a temporary remedy for the debt.

“I don’t know how you did it.” The man shook his head. “But the expression on my face means I am impressed.”

Alec really couldn’t tell any difference in the guy’s features since he’d been convinced to put the semi-automatics away.

The even spread of cash on the table wasn’t even close to what was owed, but it was an impressive beginning to a decent start. Alec knew this man had no interest in his death other than the brief cheap thrill of watching some debt laden brains splatter on a wall. A live breathing earner was of more much use than a split second of messy entertainment. He tried to be pleased about the fact that he wasn’t dead but all he could concentrate on was the pounding pain hammering in his skull. Working double shifts at the Pony and trying to keep all his other gigs up in the air was starting to really wear him down.

The only thing that wasn’t currently breaking Alec’s back happened to be the thugs standing around him. They were too busy happily counting more money than they thought anyone was capable of providing in the unfeasible time frame they had created. But Alec knew that his personal jeopardy was extended right along with his execution date. Once the impossible had been performed, people tended to expect nothing less.

The large man with the shaved head gave him an appraising look. Usually news of any of the big moves within the city’s financial infrastructure made its way down through the underground grapevine. Alec’s unexpected score was large enough that it should have made it into the digital press releases, even if it was one of the back pages past all the other more exciting unsolved crimes. But Alec knew there wouldn’t be any news of this heist. This score had been made in 60 minutes right in his own living room.

“You workin’ outside of town?”

Alec considered telling the truth about how he’d acquired the clean crisp stacks of money and felt his face get hot. It was interesting to realize the sensation as being shame. His vision swam for a moment as his headache decided to thrum in full volume. Rubbing his forearm across his face, he wiped away a light sweat even though the day was cold and near frigid.

“Got something going north of Sector 32.” Alec lied. “It’s good for a few more months.”

“Better be.” The man folded the stash away into the depth of his desk. “My interest rate still stands.”

“Right.” Alec sighed. “So? Again this time next Friday?”

“It’s a date.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sessions with his new source of income had begun to feel a lot like that.

Dates.

Only one lamp was on in the corner, the dull light of the cloudy morning filling up half his apartment with its murk and leaving the rest in shadow. Alec flipped the small square of paper in his fingertips. For a business card it was strangely devoid of information. The medium itself was even more than a bit antiquated, a courtesy from way before the Pulse.

The card's layout was sparse, printed on unremarkable stock. It had been fashioned to function, not impress. There was no title or hint of representation. Just one phone number and a name in a font he would have expected to be in some long flowing script.

Ms. Elaine Gaboriault

They had met uneventfully three times so far.

He kept waiting for the carefully catalogued inquiries to shift into something else. Some part of him kept expecting the entire scene to sooner or later involve the small bed in the corner. However, every probing off color joke he’d attempted to test her intentions had been consistently rebuked with growing repugnance. Her offense at the notion that her presence was deemed in any way untoward gave him a certain measure of relief. The recollections of how his chemistry had been manipulated hadn’t faded into a nice rosy memory. He could still feel the hands of the men who had observed his unchecked biology with clinical curiosity. The understanding of how effortlessly they had rendered him vulnerable still made him want to sit in the dark of his apartment until he disappeared. The distinct recall of Ames White’s voice in his ear still made him want to crawl under his blankets until the dawn forced him out again.

It was easier to think of placing money in the hands of the gentleman in Sector 7 who would end his existence if it stopped flowing. With the rate he was being compensated for meaningless questions, he wouldn’t have to keep indulging this intrusive diversion of a wealthy lunatic much longer.

Alec just had to stick to the game plan and everything would be fine.

He was usually asked to be in his home with strict instruction on how his fee would be compromised if he didn’t comply exactly with his strange benefactress’s stipulations. Rules weren’t anything Alec had never seen before, and as far as regulations went, hers weren’t all that difficult to follow.

Be alone.

Be on time.

Answer the questions.

But what was of entertainment to Alec was the fact that she never arrived alone. She had appeared every visit with a substantially armed escort that waited outside the door. The gesture seemed more like insurance against the shitty neighborhood Alec resided in, and little to do with Alec himself. The utter lack of fear amused as much as it mildly insulted him.

If his life as it was did not depend on blind cooperation and unmarked cash, he would have ended this before it had even begun.

She was dressed slightly different this time.

Watching her cross her legs he realized that she seemed to find her appearance incidental even though obvious care had been taken in making her graying hair blond and her creased face smoother. Trying not to match her body language he let his legs sprawl out in front of him. He dressed a lot like she did in a way. It was a uniform to blend in with the world. It was a ploy to look like everyone else without being obvious with the objective. Alec idly wondered how often this old lady left the fortress she had tucked out there behind miles of fence and all the security good credit could buy.

"What's your favorite color?" She asked.

"Gray."

She didn’t appear satisfied with the one that automatically came to mind. He had heard a lot of people make a lot of delightful associations of color with the sky so he went for what he observed without fail on a day to day basis. With some afterthought, he figured not many people chose the gloomy shade to describe their personal heartfelt connection to the broad spectrum of light. Unsure of what would be better believed, his vivid recall went to a box of crayons he had once seen.

"Brick red?"

She seemed to like his second response a lot more, and as soon as the words were out of his mouth she was back typing in her electronic notebook.

He kept waiting for her to call him on his bullshit but no such thing happened.

Alec let the analytic portion of his mind run the sentences back and forth searching for some connecting thread. Whatever her intentions were, she wasn’t giving any of them away. There was never any gracious effort to gently alleviate his obvious mounting aggravation.

When a pause lasted longer than usual, Alec shifted in his seat and decided to break one of the cardinal rules.

“So,” he asked. “You writing a book or something?”

Instead of telling him to be quiet, she didn’t acknowledge the query at all.

“Have you ever killed a human being, Alec?”

Alec kept his breathing pattern as unaffected as his expression. After a grand total of three hours spent gathering all his mundane details, the shift of tone gave him pause. But he had been waiting restlessly for the weird to get weirder. Manticore flashed in his head like a warning sign but with a few extra beats of his heart, the surge of anxiety passed. Murder was by no means the exclusive business of his former handlers. The city was ripe with so much casual slaughter in numbers so large that it was simply another percentile under the moving ticker on the news.

The question actually put him at ease.

Maybe she was hoping he’d performed a few transgressions that never reached the overloaded local detectives. X5-494 had done a few things that would make this pale woman get even paler and do some serious rethinking about her self assured personal safety. But she wasn’t asking an X5. She was asking Alec and he had never inflicted anything on another person that they couldn’t walk away from.

“No.” He answered, taking pleasure in playing the game back at her with the purposeful lack of embellishment.

Alec fought his smile when he saw her blatant disappointment.

“Thank you. That's all for today.”

Alec’s gaze flickered to the clock. He was relieved that the session was inexplicably ending sooner than specified, but simultaneously concerned that it might cut into the pay. He relaxed a little when the cash placed on the table didn’t appear to be any less than what he had been receiving.

“I’d like to see you again next week,” she said as she carefully shut down the computer and gathered her purse. “At the same time.”

“Sure,” Alec mumbled. “Whatever you want I guess.”

“Not here,” she added as she stood, her cloudy eyes meeting his for the first time since she started the day’s interview. “I’d like you to come to my home.”

Alec’s thoughts turned to the mile long wind of the monitored drive way.

He remembered the AxiumIII security system with automated artillery that could cut you into so many pieces there would be nothing left to put in a bag. He thought about who would give a shit if those barred doors shut on him and he was never seen again. The list was short, as was the waning patience of the people on it. With his talent for wandering too far into the deep end, he knew the next time he vanished under the surface that he wouldn’t blame a soul involved if they decided to step away and wish him the best of luck.

“No way.” He said.

She looked nonplussed for a moment but then she nodded.

“I understand," she nodded. “I’ll double your fee.”

He grit his teeth at the thought of the cash he needed more than air at the moment. Bracing himself, he decided right then and there that he’d figure something else out. This bizarre experiment in revenue had gone as far as it would go. It would be a really desperate leap, but he could try to work something else out within the circles of the city’s black market. If worse came to worse, he could call on some of that violence that this woman was so eager to hear about.

“Forget it,” Alec liked saying it. He liked seeing that sure look on her face turn into unease. “We’re through here lady. Whatever you wanted I hope you got it.”

“I’ll triple it.”

Now that he had privately decided the business relationship was over, Alec let himself enjoy how her voice wavered as she pulled her bag closer. He wasn’t going to be calling anyone. She could sit next to that phone until the sun winked out before she’d be hearing his voice on the line. The tall thin woman seemed to read his sudden resoluteness like he’d given her a physical shove towards the door.

“You have my card,” she said curtly. “Please use it if you should change your mind.”

After he shut the door behind her, his mind was already dividing up the sum she’d left into parcels.

Some he could double on a few games. Another piece could go to a few pool matches that he would definitely be winning. But even with that he wouldn’t come close to doubling what he was being handed just for talking. He could put off the collector in Sector 7 for another week at most, after that he had to come up with another way to pay them off or he’d have to leave town. The headache he’d been foiling all day long with pure will power alone was getting worse.

He ground a knuckle into his forehead, the burning twinge growing into a white hot knot.

Sliding down the door, he slumped onto the floor and felt a wave of nausea roil up the back of his throat. Throughout the interview all he could think about was getting out of this room and hitting the nearest and cheapest noodle stall on the street. Now the thought of a steaming bowl of greasy broth made him want nothing at all. Holding his stomach, he walked to his fridge and pulled out a bottle of fizzy water. Gulping some of it down, he pushed his hand curiously over his forehead and was vaguely surprised to detect an elevated temperature.

“Aw, that’s great,” Alec groaned. “That’s perfect.”

He’d succumbed to the ordinary viral infections that plagued the masses before. The rarity of the occurrence made it even more spectacularly unpleasant.

The alarm clock alarm went off and forced him to think about clothes and the location of his jacket.

He had to be on the Jam Pony floor in precisely forty-five minutes. Speculating when exactly the fun filled experience of fending off some microorganisms would become full blown, he dragged another layer on before he shrugged on his coat.

Unpleasant or not, necessity had a way of forcing you right on along.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crash hadn’t evolved much since Logan had first laid eyes on it.

Logan prided himself in avoiding most social scenes of any kind but it was a shabby excuse on the off chance he might run into her. It was as obvious as it looked but he didn’t care. Subterfuge and games were second nature by now. He’d play for as long as he had to. Even in a dark room filled with horrible music and pot smoke so thick he could get a contact high.

"Drinking all alone is sign of dependency."

Logan looked up in surprise at Alec. "Nice to see you too," he greeted in return. "Didn't see you come in."

The transgenic took a seat and shrugged off his jacket.

The clean scent of Alec's sweat cut through the smoke. Even after all this time, Logan expected the warm heavy linger of the X5’s pheromones to flood his senses along with it. However, Alec’s scent had ceased being saturated with the genetically enhanced hormone weeks ago. Embarrassed at his Pavlovian response to Alec’s presence, Logan hid his face by taking another gulp of his beer. How much longer was this charming little side effect going to last? Knowing what the transgenics could read off others, he sincerely prayed that his awkwardness wasn’t one of them.

But when he looked back up at Alec, the man wasn’t paying much attention to him at all. He’d procured a glass and was helping himself to the pitcher.

“Think this dump will ever make it onto a terrorist target list?” Alec gave a small unenthusiastic toast to the bar’s deteriorating decor.

Logan heard the edge in Alec’s voice and listened for what was probably going to come next. It wasn’t any surprise that ratting Alec out to Max was going to make the full circle and slap Logan in the face eventually.

“But you know how it is, right Logan? When a guy finds a spot to get comfortable, someone always has to be a buzz kill and burn it all down.”

Logan found that he honestly didn’t really care if the breach in confidence pissed anyone off as long as he kept all his bases covered. “That reminds me. I found out a few new things about your friend.”

Alec’s meandering gaze swiftly snapped in his direction. Logan watched the transgenic fail to feign disinterest for a few moments while pretending to test his beer.

“Well?” Alec finally asked. “Like what?”

“I found out she is connected to the Gaboriault family out on the east coast, but she’s lived here for a long time,” Logan said. “Almost twenty years.”

“19 years and 4 months,” Alec slumped back in his chair. “Public records are for anybody, Logan.”

“She’s a doctor.”

“A shrink?”

Logan blinked at the sudden and certain way Alec had assumed the variation of physician.

“No? She practiced neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. She rotated through some Universities until she retired into the private sector.” He sipped his beer. “Right about when she moved here actually.”

“But what does she want?”

Logan abruptly realized Alec was withholding a somewhat larger and more disturbing picture.

He had been wondering why there would be so much interest in this random woman out in Sector 12. While he expected Alec to be looking to milk the situation in one way or another, the X5 had never come to Logan for aid to fleece someone out of their locked up valuables. Alec only came looking for him when he had no where else to go and he needed help. And a man like Alec never went looking for anyone unless he was scared.

Knowing he had to phrase whatever he was going to say the right way, Logan gave himself a moment to think.

“This-This Elaine Gaboriault?” he began. “She’s been in contact with you?”

Alec looked like all he wanted to do was get up and leave. His expression was pure misery as he looked forlornly at the far off exit across the room.

“Alec look, I don’t want to do anything but help okay?”

Logan heard the soft tone in his voice that all the X5s he knew hated to hear. Unlike the children they seemed most of the time, the adults they actually were rightfully loathed anything they perceived as remotely condescending.

At least he knew that was the song and dance with Max.

With Alec he had to admit that he felt something else entirely. The young man’s fragile trust in him existed solely because of their short history together. Logan knew this sliver of reliance had been earned because of what had happened. This transgenic had lain in Logan’s very own bed and allowed himself assistance when he had been too weak to lift a hand. Logan knew what kind of pride had to be set aside after you’d been injured so grievously that life was no longer the same after you opened your eyes. He was no stranger to agony and he was familiar with how bitter humility could taste. Alec’s fear was that any trust he gave would be misused, exploited or disregarded. All Alec expected from people that knew what he was, was to be used by them.

The terrible thing was that the transgenic was completely right.

If Alec’s radar had been tripped than there was probably a pretty good reason for it. Ever since White had got him back into the system, the existence of X5-494 must have carried through the remnants’ of Manticore like a flame through a fuse. Logan had warned him that his recapture and subsequent escape would place him back on a few most wanted lists.

He just had no idea it might happen this soon.

“I can arrange for you to leave the city,” Logan said. “Tonight. I have safe houses all the way to—“

“It’s not like that.” Alec mumbled.

“Like what, Alec?” Logan heard the frustration in his voice but he couldn’t stop it.

“I don’t think—I don’t think she’s—“

Logan heard the word Manticore as clearly as if it had been spoken.

“I don’t know,” Alec said quietly. “I don’t know what she was.”

“Alec—“

“But it’s all over,” Alec assured him. “It’s done with.”

Logan’s thoughts flew in every direction at once. Before he could demand something a bit more straight forward, they were interrupted.

“Hey, Logan.” Max gave Alec a small nod in turn.

Logan frequently noted that when the transgenics greeted each other, they reverted to their senses and simple eye contact.

“What’s wrong with you?” She asked Alec.

Max’s blunt gauge was based on a very different set of averages that the typical human being used to judge one another. Distracted by her arrival, Logan looked back at Alec and tried to reassess what he saw. What he had observed earlier as simple fatigue did seem to border close to something else.

“Nothing,” Alec said. “Think I’m getting the flu.”

“You can get the flu?” Logan tried to make it sound like a joke.

All he had wanted that night was for Max to show up and now he wished she’d stayed elusive as usual. With this new audience there was no way Alec was going to say what he had been struggling not to.

“Strange but true,” Max was eyeing him dubiously but shrugged. “I got a nasty one the second year I was out. Looks like the common cold trumps about everything, huh?”

“Yeah.” Alec smiled. “World’s a magical place.”

Logan didn’t like it very much when he was completely aware of when Alec was attempting to seem sincere. He realized he had come to recognize exactly what situations forced the man to deem it necessary. Max began to wander in the direction of a pool game that had gathered a small crowd. Grasping at the fleeting moment of privacy that Alec might communicate in, he turned to see the other transgenic had stood up too.

“Oh,” Alec’s voice lowered as he reached into his pocket. “I-I do have one thing to show you?”

Logan looked down at the business card that Alec had spun across the table. So much for any doubts that this civilian had merely made contact with Alec. Looked like she had met him face to face.

“Seeing on how you're so much older than I am?” Alec grinned tiredly, the same snide method used to accuse shifting to serve as a means of apology. “I figure maybe you’ve seen more of these things than I have.”

“Do yourself a favor, Alec?” Logan felt himself smiling a little back. “Buy some Nyquil.”

“Comes with its own shot glass right?” Alec pointed. “I’ve heard great things.”

Logan watched him walk right past the laughing crowd that was cheering the underdog at the tables. Alec instead headed for the stairs that lead out into the rain soaked night.

Lifting the card off the table, Logan studied its unadorned front and blank back. Reading the flat line of what was now becoming a familiar name, he noted the phone number was prefixed to an actual landline. Logan tucked the card into his wallet and frowned. Although the gesture of a slip of paper was outdated, the meaning behind it still remained the same. In the days of aliases and anonymous computer based correspondence, it was standard fare to be handed a disposal cell phone number. No one gave you personal information like a house address unless they wanted one thing.

It was when someone wanted to make sure they’d stay in touch.

Logan tossed a few bills on the table and decided it was time to call it a night as well. If Dr. Elaine Gaboriault was handing out phone numbers he might as well run it through his database of known government contacts. Maybe even a few lists he had of people the invisible sections of the administration kept on private payrolls. Whatever there was to find, he would dig it up.

Secrets were hard to keep these days.

Especially from a man like him.

 

tbc


	4. Chapter 4

“You look like shit.”

Alec pulled his arm off his face and focused on the figure looming over him. Cindy had all her hair pulled up almost comically into a ponytail on the top of her head. Alec knew function when he saw it and he didn’t blame her for casting vanity aside for the exceptionally torrential downpour they were operating in for the day.

“That’s good.” Alec conceded. “Everyone should look exactly how they feel.”

It wasn’t often that a claim of the entire length of the one and only break sofa was to be had. It was the only piece of furniture in the place that was worth attempting to doze on and Alec had never realized its merit until he felt the need for some shut eye himself. Considering how little he got in the privacy of his own apartment, deciding to go into blackout in public made him wonder how bad this flu thing was going to get.

“By the way?” He added. “Nyquil doesn’t do jack.”

Cindy slumped down into a folding chair nearby and let her waterlogged backpack drop to the floor. She was the only person Alec had ever seen that liked to shake their carbonated beverages before opening them. Watching the foam run out over the rim, he fantasized about what a clear glass of water would feel like on his dry burning throat.

“You take the right dose?” She asked. “Ain’t gonna work if you sip the stuff like cognac.”

“I sipped the entire bottle—”

“Alec!” Normal’s voice shut through the incessant chatter of the overhead plasma screen and the street noise clamoring down off the ramp. “You’re up!”

The act of standing made the room lurch a few times before it settled on the correct angle. Alec stretched and felt his lethargic body unwillingly begin to wake up again. It felt like all of his muscles had been replaced with lead and his head had been stuffed with the same. Groaning at the sharp pain that hadn’t faded behind his eyes, he slid a hand over the tightness in his chest as it caused his next inhale to turn into a wheeze. Leaning on the dispatch counter, he waited for the harsh coughing fit to pass before he straightened and held out his hands like he’d just performed some kind of magic trick by staying conscious.

“I eat two oranges a day.” Normal gave him a small confidential nod. “Haven’t had one case of the sniffles since 2009.”

Alec wasn’t sure where you could acquire two healthy live oranges every day when finding some damn toothpaste was like going on a treasure hunt. In the fog of his head, he mentally filed the information away for a later date. Utilizing Normal for the untapped black market fruit trade had never occurred to him, but there was no arguing that his boss knew how to thrive in a world that didn’t make it easy. The electric keen shriek of ringing phones jarred Alec back to the issue at hand. He held up the wrapped stack of boxes that were waiting for him on the counter.

“Where?” It would be better to keep this day and everything in it down to the very basics. “And how fast?”

“10 in 10.” Normal returned the favor.

Sector one-zero in ten minutes. Alec looked despondently back at the sofa.

“That’s a rough one, sugar.” Cindy said from beside him as she collected the next delivery. She gave a sigh of her own when she spotted the address that promised a nice scenic hike out all the way to 36. “But you know what they say? Put up or shut up.”

“I’m putting, I’m putting…” He muttered as he shoved the oblong boxes into his bag.

“Hurry on back.” Normal said. “More where that came from.”

Alec summoned a grin.

“Whatever doesn’t kill ya right?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alec hadn’t made the drop in anywhere close to ten minutes.

After hitting the bustling line at the sector point, he had the profound bad luck of seeing a familiar face behind one of the riot helmet visors. Getting pulled out of line for random searches was no new thing, but the first time Alec had won that lame time consuming lottery he hadn’t handled the situation with the grace he thought he could have. It turned out that questioning the possible barnyard origins of the sector cop with the latex gloves wasn’t such a great idea. Although the incident had been months earlier and the cop must have seen thousands of people ever since, the man always managed to spot Alec and pull him out from the teeming crowds.

Being jostled out of line and dragged through a metal detector made Alec grateful for his unique and absent need for firearms. This evening’s pointless inspection included dismantling his bike and turning the waterproof bag inside out in the steady pour of rain. After getting a wand shoved roughly up and around his crotch, he had to hand it to the cop for really knowing how to carry a grudge. Alec knew he should be glad he wasn’t subjected to a body search on top of it all, but the delay had turned the Jam Pony ten minute promise into an hour long wait.

When he finally made it through the doors of the delivery address, he let the slighted customer verbally abuse him for as long as required. It was much warmer and drier in the stuffy basement office than it was out there on the streets anyway. By the end of the business ethics rant that was conveniently orated nearby a toasty heating vent, Alec figured they both probably felt better than they had before they had met. But he’d still been obligated to wheel his ride back out into the miserable weather without any tip to make it worthwhile.

Alec paused under the flimsy shelter of a newsstand’s sagging pagoda to test his recently reconstructed bike. The check point cop had left him to fasten the frame back together himself but he’d been in too much of a hurry to properly test its structural integrity.

Bouncing the wheels on the pavement, he knelt down to check each bolt by touch. He was vaguely concerned at how badly his hands were trembling as he gave each one a hard twist that was as good as a wrench. Righting himself, his gaze caught and lingered on the miniature tiered eaves that the stand’s owner had copied from old Chinese architecture. They had been spray painted a weird shade of red that was almost neon.

For no reason at all, his brain returned to the steady clacking of the woman’s delicate hands over the keyboard in the silence of his apartment.

Although he’d lived most of his life listening, no one had ever asked him so many things before. The stream of endless questions had been the kind that an average human being would have easy answers for. Favorite foods. Favorite numbers. Months of the year. Preferable animals and favored make and models of cars. She had even asked him what his favorite color was. His only frame of reference outside the three primary colors that created every thing else in between was the baffling list he’d once read off a child’s box of crayons. The bizarre names for the shades across the spectrum came flashing back as his mind automatically classified the tint of the obnoxious tiles of the pagoda. flamingo brink pink.

“Can I help you?”

Alec jerked his attention over to the counter set back far enough under the sloping roof to avoid the loud splatter of the storm runoff. Blinking at the old man behind the register, he wasn’t sure how long he might have been standing there blankly admiring the garish paint job.

“S-Sorry.” Alec mumbled.

Strange bouts of loitering were enough to make anyone in any part of town nervous. If you weren’t buying than you were probably selling and drug dealers frequently attracted bullets along with their clientele. He rolled his bike out from under the refuge of the stand and onto the street corner. The icy rain soaked him through again in no time flat, his core temperature lowered enough for muscle tremors to begin in places other than his hands. Dragging a drenched jacket sleeve across his mouth, his breath sluggishly fogged in front of his face.

The dull steady ache in his head suddenly slid across the back of his eyes like a blade’s edge. Pushing a palm into his forehead, he stumbled against the bike as the hissing rush of passing vehicles abruptly tuned down into something far off and distant. His shaking hands clutched the wet handlebars as he waited for the excruciating sensation to fade.

The water streaming in his eyes made the flash of rush hour a blur, but he could see the rosy haze around the lights flicker to a gauzy green. He just had to get back to the Pony and finish his day. He’d take some more of that useless disgusting cough syrup and just—

“Hey!”

Alec heard the screech of brakes and the blast of several car horns before he realized the smell of burnt rubber and angry voices was right in front of him. The metallic taste of rainwater mixed with the overpowering reek of spilt gasoline. He watched in bewilderment as rainbow puddles of oil spread and expanded under the glare of headlights.

“What are ya?” The old man asked in disbelief. “Fuckin’ nuts?”

Alec felt the man’s strong grip on the back of his collar and didn’t remember when it had gotten there. He looked back into the distortion of the crosswalk and saw his bike had fallen into the street. The frame was twisted completely in half and lodged under the front end of a crumpled taxicab. People were out of their cars shouting at each other and looking for the owner of the bike.

“You get goin’.” The man pushed Alec in the opposite direction down the sidewalk. “Sleep it off somewhere else.”

There was a flash of deep down cold as he finally comprehended that the guy had yanked him back from stepping right into oncoming traffic. With one last regretful look at the remains of his only means of transportation, he grabbed the strap of his pack and started moving like the stand owner had suggested.

Flicking open his phone he decided to let his boss know he was going to be taking the day off.

It had been a while but he thought he might be in need of a sick day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alec normally felt a subtle sink of disappointment whenever he entered his apartment.

It usually meant he was sentenced to a certain amount of hours alone until the world’s cycle started up again and he was needed for its procession. But staggering down his hallway felt like digging down to finish a race to home sweet home. He tried to keep his pace slow so he could use a hand up along the wall to stay the sickening sway of his equilibrium. It took three tries to get the key in before the lock finally turned. The inside of his place felt like a freezer. He would have tried to turn on the heat but he wasn’t sure if he even had any to turn on.

The irritating weight of his backpack blissfully slid off his shoulder like it was filled with rocks instead of being empty. Peeling off his saturated coat, he sat down heavily to tug off his boots one by one. After a few moments he decided it was time he headed for the bathroom before he fell asleep sitting there. Twisting the bath faucet as high as it could go, he removed the shirt that was plastered to his frigid skin, and the even colder sopping jeans.

Not waiting for the water to collect, he lowered his body into the tub knowing that total submersion would raise his temperature faster than using the shower head. Holding his hands under the searing pour from the fount, he splashed the steaming water against his face over and over again. He was still shaking after the water in the tub cooled down enough to make him want to get out. Forgoing clothes, he dragged the blankets on his bed around him and tried to get as comfy as he could. He knew that feeling this hypothermic with a temperature soaring this high was bad news. It didn’t require a doctor to know that sweating while shivering uncontrollably meant your immune system was going into the red.

He thought about what every other person on the planet did when they got this level of sick. They drank lots of water, got lots of sleep and waited it out. He felt a flutter of fear as he thought of the last time he had spent in this bed staring at the ceiling and waiting for the suffering to stop. He swallowed, the ache in his throat making him groan as he considered how much fluid he’d have to subject it to before he could drift off into a temporary coma.

Leaving the blankets behind, he ventured towards his kitchen hoping the bottles of water he had would be enough for at least a day of uninterrupted rest. If he could avoid the hostile precipitation for at least 12 hours it might do the trick—

He stopped with his hand frozen on the cabinet door.

Alec hadn’t noticed it when he had come in.

Distracted by the bone racking chill and the promise of a hot bath, he hadn’t been paying much attention to anything else. The usual pile of take out menus and flyers were a typical sight to find inside his door after he’d been out all day. But there was something lying amongst the usual that wasn’t usual at all. It was a sealed envelope, the kind you’d send old fashioned snail mail in.

Alec’s feverish mind flashed and involuntarily identified the soft homely color of its rain wrinkled paper. custard canary yellow. Numb fingers picked it up out of the pile and studied it. There was nothing on either side but his name neatly printed on its front. It was easy to rip open. Sliding the contents out into his hand, he felt his chest tighten and another wave of dizziness flood nauseatingly through his head. He stared down at the object in his palm that was as uncomplicated as the wrapping it had been delivered in.

Standing up precariously, he took a deep breath as he thought about going back into the solid fall of the rain outside. Fighting his weakened night vision, he fumbled to his knees and dug through a dark closet until he found his warmest clothing. He started to pull it all on despite the many flaws in practicality. The small journey he was about to take would make the protection useless after a half a block out in the relentless deluge. The feel of wet boots back on his feet made his jaw clench, but he forced his unstable hold to tug the laces up as tight as they would go.

Alec pushed a hand down the front of his jeans and felt the thin wad of cash spread between his fingertips. If he had the unfathomable good fortune to find a vacant cab on a night like this he was going to spend a little bit of the money he’d earned. Shutting the door he’d been so happy to see just shortly before, Alec zipped up his coat and headed unsteadily for the elevator.

He touched the inside pocket where the envelope was safest from the damp.

One of these days he was really going to have to invest in an umbrella.

 

 

 

 

 

The rain drumming on the tall windows that made up most of the walls of his home had long ago become a comforting sound.

Logan had cleared a space for his chair so he could wheel and sit facing his favorite vantage of the city. Max had asked him once or twice if he ever got sick of the view but he never gave her anything but a smile. Truth was he loved every cliché about the romantic notion that distance created a peace for anything at all. It was false peace but Logan had a vivid imagination and sometimes he could almost believe that the glittering sprawl of the city was as still and hushed as his living room.

The door buzzer went off.

Glancing at his watch, he knew whoever was calling wasn’t here for anything pleasant. But he blinked in confusion at what the close circuit camera revealed behind the door. Of all the informants, double agents and anonymous individuals that kept odd hours, this person was one of the last he’d been expecting to see. Deactivating the lock mechanisms, Logan tugged his chair back so he could get a good look at who was waiting impatiently for him in the hallway.

“A-Alec?”

Logan wanted to explain that he wasn’t shocked at the sight of Alec appearing on his doorstep in the middle of the night. He was in actuality rendered speechless by the fact that the transgenic had actually knocked on his front door instead of breaking in as was customary.

“Come in.” Logan realized he was sitting in the doorway and staring.

“Were you uh, sleeping?”

“Actually, I wasn’t.”

Logan didn’t want to tell him that he’d been staring out the window doing nothing. He quickly decided to detail what he’d been doing all afternoon with his standard business instead.

“I got a hold of some passwords from this contact on the top floors of KenCom. Really great stuff so far, I got into a couple of next year’s fiscal reports that shouldn’t even exist yet let alone—“

“Sounds like good times.”

“You’re soaked.” Logan noticed.

“It’s raining.” Alec said.

The transgenic’s voice was tense and unnatural. It was also the scratchy sound of someone who should probably be under several blankets and healing, not standing around dripping ice water on someone’s drafty foyer floor. Although Logan had seen him the night before, whatever bug he’d caught looked like it had gotten a lot worse. He was about to ask why there was a need to be here in person instead of just using a telephone, but Alec beat him to the punch.

“I found this.”

Logan looked at the crumpled paper that Alec had pulled out of his jacket pocket. He hadn’t seen many of the things outside of old family albums but it wasn’t exactly something to walk across two sectors in the rain for.

“Open it.” Alec held it out.

Logan noted the stiff feel of the stock under the soggy envelope. Pulling out the flowered greeting card, he flipped it open to see the polite well wishes that had been printed inside. Under the factory composed banal poetry was a handwritten sentence beside a pair of initials:

Feel better soon,  
E.G

Logan sighed.

“How did she even know I was sick?” Alec’s strained voice wavered. “Why would—“

“Why don’t you put some water on?” Logan suggested. “I don’t know if you drink tea but you look like you could use some.”

Alec left muddy boot prints across the pristine wood floors as he moved to do Logan’s word as if it had been an order. Knowing the X5 wouldn’t mind a change of clothes, Logan wheeled to his dining room table that was currently being used to hold most of his freshly folded laundry. He pulled out a shirt and sweatpants from the pile and tossed them in Alec’s direction. Sliding up to his terminal, he rotated his chair to give Alec some notion of privacy when the transgenic started stripping right then and there. Logan didn’t bother getting upset over the sodden cast offs being flung in a heap on the kitchen floor. He had learned a long time ago that you let an X5 do whatever the hell they wanted on their own terms.

You could push and pull all day long but being messily deposited in a world devoid of direct commands had left the children of Manticore in a constant state of hesitant self assertion. Pressing a touchy issue was all fun and games until a fist went through the wall. It was a maddening exercise in exasperation, but Logan almost always saw the results of persistent patience.

Alec would only come here for one reason. He was finally ready to spill.

“That business card you gave me at Crash?” Logan keyed in to one of his many alias e-mail accounts. “I sent it to a friend of mine. I’m expecting a report back tonight.”

There was no answer as Alec abandoned the wait for water to boil and sank down into the leather sofa instead.

“I’m hoping he might be able to lift some prints off it.” Logan explained. “That might get us something.”

“You could dust my place.” Alec coughed hard into a fist. “I-I bet she left a decent set on the doorknob whenever she left.”

Logan’s hands stopped on the keyboard as this new information was conveyed. So this woman had been in Alec’s apartment. From the off handed way Alec had said it, it sounded like she had been there multiple times. It didn’t take long for Alec to pick up on the awkward silence. The pale cast to his features darkened in frustration.

“I know what it sounds like.” Alec growled as he found a pillow and punched it into shape in his lap. “But that’s not what she was paying me for.”

Swinging around, Logan had to catch the wheel before he almost sent himself in a complete full circle.

“Wait.” He shut his eyes and felt himself shaking his head. “Just wait a second.”

Alec shifted his tired gaze away uncomfortably.

“This-this woman has been coming to see you in your apartment.” Logan attempted to summarize. “What was she paying you for? Drugs?”

“No.” Alec replied softly.

If it wasn’t sex and it wasn’t drugs, then why would a woman with means come all the way to Alec’s sector and enter his apartment? The obvious question was hanging in the air and Logan was hard pressed to guess what other service the transgenic could have possibly provided. Whatever it was, he had to wonder what exactly could reduce a man like Alec into being so flustered that even discussing it out loud was difficult.

“Alec.” Logan had his limits just like everyone else. “If this woman is with Manticore you had better tell me right now—“

“If she was do you think I’d be sitting here right now?” He held up his hands. “If this was Manticore all you’d ever see of me again would be some tasteful black & whites of my autopsy from one of your little mole friends.”

Logan tensely worked his hands on his wheels.

“Besides?” Alec forced a small smile. “Those guys never once gave me a pay check.”

Logan fought the logic for a few moments before he had to agree that Alec was right. If the location of an X5 was known then that transgenic had a tendency to promptly vanish off the map without a trace. Money had certainly never been used as a motivator by the owners of those labs. All they’d ever seemed to employ to ensure servitude was abject torture and games of manipulation.

Alec had withdrawn back into the fragile grasp of his contained but unconcealed anxiety. He had started coughing again, his entire body shuddering with the severity of it. Giving up on staying upright, the transgenic drew up his knees and hacked himself miserably into a near fetal position. There was a decent inventory of medications that Logan had no business owning in his newly rebuilt bathroom mirror cabinet. When that tea was ready he’d make sure a few of the more powerful fever reducers got into Alec whether he wanted them or not. For self sufficient machines of biometrics, the X5s were fairly ineffectual when it came to taking care of themselves. It seemed growing up with a personal and watchful medical staff might cause an inability in the best and brightest to know precisely what to do if they got ill all on their own.

When Alec’s groping hand found a blanket and pulled it over his head, Logan turned his attention back to his keyboard.

Eyes Only had an overwhelming allotment of corporate inscrutability to deal with on a timely and daily basis. A few insistent but brief crises had pushed the subject of Dr. Elaine Gaboriault onto the system’s back burners for a while. But he had left a few searches going while his focus was demanded elsewhere. A full 48 hour scan probably would have turned up something besides the woman’s medical career by now. It took a few minutes to log in and navigate his way through the undetectable cyber mazes he had created to get his own trails lost in. It took a few more to find his way through the pathways and dead ends to acquire what he needed most at the moment. With a small smile, he saw that his fishing had hooked a few things on the line after all.

“It’s weird.”

Logan scanned the screen in distraction as the lists scrolled in several windows.

“She’s the opposite of dirty. I can’t even find a delinquent parking ticket. She’s too clean. No one has a record like this.”

The sudden stuttering whistle of the boiling kettle startled him. Speaking of back burners, Alec had set the boiling kettle on the very furthest in the corner. It made it difficult to reach from his chair but he had experienced more than enough painful accidents by rushing things. Disinclined to dump a pot of boiling water on his lap, he took his time maneuvering it around until he could get a decent grip on its handle. He saw the counter already had a single mug waiting with a tea bag sitting in it. Unsure if Alec was being extremely polite or incredibly rude, Logan filled the cup and decided it didn’t matter. He’d make sure Alec slept here for the night. All he needed was some rest with potent medication and then they could take all this up again in the morning.

Logan rounded the corner ready to argue the curative benefits of the tea leaf.

But the sofa was empty.

“Alec?”

As soon as the name left his mouth he knew that Alec hadn’t wandered to the bathroom or found the more comfortable bed in the back. The front door was standing open. One of Logan’s leather coats was missing from the hook by the closet.

“Damn it.” Logan muttered.

An urgent audio signal from his terminal made him hastily put the steaming mug aside. The analysis report on the business card had come in while he was busy attempting to make tea. It had opened in plain view of the sofa if Alec had been interested enough to get up and take a look. Logan wheeled back to his computer, apprehensive at what Alec might have seen that would make him decide to suddenly take off.

There was an open window on the monitor blinking imperatively with a warning frame. A magnified scanned image of the business card spanned across two screens, the breakdown beneath it reporting three sets of fingerprints found. However, the only two useable sets belonged to Logan himself and an unidentified male which was most assuredly Alec.

However, it was the last lines of the short report that made Logan’s skin prickle.

_Sample tests positive for unknown pathogen.  
Pathogen engineered for a specific DNA strand.  
Strand remarkable for its recombinant DNA content._

Underneath it were pages and pages of coded chemistry detailing what bacterium had been found embedded in the square of paper. The young but discreet freelance lab tech operating somewhere out of a basement had left a small personal note under the formal lines of computer analysis.

_Logan-  
Recombinant DNA is a man-made DNA sequence. We’re talking full on genetic engineering here, dude! Where the hell did you score this thing from?_

Logan dragged his hands over his face and up through his hair.

So the paper’s fibers had been loaded with a contagion to pass on to anyone who touched it. But it had all been created specifically for a particular person. Someone with man-made DNA that would most assuredly make repeated physical contact with it. This wasn’t like the tainted water that had spread out all over the city like a blind net searching for male X5s, this thing had been created to be aimed at X5-494. Logan’s gaze fell on the yellow envelope that had undoubtedly been treated with the same substance that had coated the business card. The cheerful message inside was now a bit more sinister than it was strange.

He knew well enough how the nature of a DNA specific virus could work. It could kill as easily and swiftly as a lethal injection to the heart if that was the maker’s intention. But Alec wasn’t dead. The transgenic was still very much alive.

Logan turned back towards his front door that sat wide open to the dim quiet hallway beyond. If he had learned anything about Alec at all, he knew that taking some time to ponder a problem wasn’t high on the man’s list of special skills. With the shape the transgenic was in, it would take a good amount of time for Alec to get anywhere far.

His chair tipped up on one wheel as he turned sharply up against the set of the cybernetic exoskeleton in the corner. When he was on his feet he found his keys and his phone. If Logan made it through that new sector bypass, he could be in Sector 12 before Max even answered his page.

If he drove fast enough he might even get to Dr. Elaine Gaboriault’s door before Alec did.


	5. Chapter 5

The black looming shapes of the automated machine guns hadn’t been installed tactfully within the tasteful cover of the clipped hedges.

Alec paused beside one of them, running his hand down the water beaded sides of the long sleek barrel. The motion detectors on them had been shut off, the hum of their pivot mechanisms as still and silent as the razor red pinpoint of the laser tracking system. The lethal equipment had been placed so anyone foolishly willing to trespass would know what kind of trouble they could expect. All the rest of the machinery sitting interspersed with the landscaping was offline too. There was more that he knew was buried under the grass beneath his boots as he walked.

As soon as he had hit the perimeter his path had been vigilantly observed by the network of plain sight cameras and many more that were undetectable. There was no way he would have been able to safely transverse through this wire jungle of hardware without someone allowing him to. He could hear the drone of machinery grind down around him as he moved through each private patch of forest. Each segment of property swiftly came back online as soon as he’d advanced into another section of the defense grid. And it seemed someone on the inside was courteously leading the way to the mansion.

As luck would have it, that destination was precisely where Alec wanted to go.

The sloping lawn that ran up behind the private road was divided by row after row of sagging evergreens, their branches heavy and dripping with rain. The careful scenery reminded him of the woman who lived here. The gardens were as expensive as they were uninspiring. The unadorned marble fountains were filled with nothing but rain water and the tidy manicured trails were unused.

Several mounted cameras turned in his direction when it seemed he had inexplicably paused in his slow journey towards the house.

With an angry growl he hauled back and kicked a massive granite cherub statue as hard as he was able. With satisfaction he watched as it slowly tipped before smashing over onto its side. It cracked right down its center, its impact leaving a nice sized fissure through the flagstone path. He made to do worse to its blank staring twin on the opposite side, but all he managed to accomplish was to slide it off center from its base. Clutching his skinned knuckles, he gasped as his unstable grasp on consciousness narrowed dangerously into tunnel vision. Everything went blinding white and for a moment of winded panic he thought he was going to lose it.

A tearing cough ripped up inside of him, forcing him onto his knees as all his breath was squeezed from his lungs. But despite the keen whining buzz of agony in his head threatening to short circuit, the rainy dark came clamoring back into focus, the beat of the water thundering in his ears. He braced himself as his chest seized again, his trembling hands involuntarily covering his mouth in some effort to smother the onslaught. Staring down, he saw that his palms were dark with blood. Fighting not to collapse on the ground like he wanted to, Alec laboriously pushed himself up into an unsteady stand. Skipping the meandering paths, he cut up through the steep undergrowth until he finally broke free onto the other side.

Appropriately enough he found himself standing in the circular gravel driveway he had seen when he’d made his delivery all those days ago. The motorcycle was missing but a lone lamp over the back door was on. It was the only light he’d seen since he’d left the main road a mile behind him. The fact that he had been quietly directed towards the service entrance didn’t pass under his notice.

Since his presence wasn’t exactly a secret he wasn’t surprised when the doorknob turned under his hand. This lady had had about one hundred chances to end his life on every occasion they had met. If that wasn’t the objective than the security artillery could have finished up the job and liquefied his body into a spray before he ever knew what hit him. His death was not what she was after.

But Alec knew that death could be the least of his worries if she was just the right amount of crazy. Taking one last look over his shoulder into the rain, he tried to call on his soldier’s instinct to assess the quiet unlit entry that lead into the mammoth of the building. He wasn’t sure what the hell he was going to do. He was, however, certain that he was going to do something bad to that doctor’s probing somber face.

Stepping into the dark, he hoped the welcome wagon was ready and waiting.

He had a suspicion that he didn’t have loads of time left before whatever germ he’d been given got to its climactic finish line.

 

 

 

 

Like most older and affluent dwellings, its solid design was composed mainly from marble. By the stale smell of the air its interior maintenance was not foremost on anyone's list.

Trying to see what lay beyond the dark hallway, he swayed when his frayed balance shifted out of his control. With a quick release of strangled breath, he caught himself against the cool stone of the wall.

Even with the lights off and his senses disabled, he could tell that everything surrounding him was neglected. The rooms he passed had a scattering of furniture covered in pale sheets or left to molder in the corners. No family photographs hung on the walls. Though he knew the wealthy were not all inclined to flaunt their wealth with works of art, usually some attempt was made to fill in the wide empty places money could provide. It was as if the entire house was under renovation or about to be abandoned.

But the place was not completely devoid of accent.

Alec gazed up at the oversized crystal chandelier hanging high above his head. He’d found the main stairwell that wrapped up four full stories of the building. The elegant glass tendrils suspended in the dark reminded him vaguely of a glittering wet spider web. As he hesitantly passed beneath it, he suddenly realized he wasn’t alone.

Elaine Gaboriault was standing above on the wind of steps.

Every time he’d ever seen her she’d been meticulously dressed with her dyed hair wound neatly behind her head. Alec thought about Logan answering the door in the middle of the night and knew her faintly concerned expression was the same of anyone interrupted from the deep privacy of their early morning hours. Without the carefully applied makeup and expensive clothes, the washed out pale of her face appeared more like the aged woman she was. The doctor pulled the neck of her robe closer and cleared her throat.

“You should have called like I asked,” she frowned, tucking back her loose thin hair tiredly. “I would have sent the car.”

He knew what he must look like. Scrambling through that last patch of muddy woods had left his face and clothing covered in dirt and scrapes. His limbs were trembling from exhaustion, causing him to adjust his footing every time his equilibrium nauseatingly tilted from side to side. He could feel the sickening sheen of sweat on his chilled skin, his hair clinging to his forehead and the back of his neck. All he could concentrate on through the pain was his fists clenching and unclenching weakly at his sides.

“What d-did you do to me?” Alec tried to suppress the next agonizing shudder in his chest. He wanted to scare this woman but his fear made the words an echo of the threat he wanted it to be. “I-I’m going to kill you.”

She folded her arms delicately.

"Perhaps you’d like to sit down for a few minutes first?"

It was the hint of a smile that triggered it. The self-assured arrogance of one looking a caged tiger in the eye. That look was not new to him. He'd seen it many times, on the faces of lab techs as the needle slid in or something was forced into his mouth. Her cool dismissal sent a growl surging from his raw throat. A dizzying rush of adrenaline receded as quickly as it hit him, giving his legs just enough strength to make it halfway up before he faltered on the cool stone steps, vertigo making him cling to the banister to stay upright.

"Look at you." She murmured.

Alec was too spent to move, his muscles twitching in agitation. He lay against the hard edges of the stairs and stifled his checked rage behind clenched teeth. His eyes fluttered as he watched her descend to stand next to him. He wanted to pull away when she sat down, flinching when bony fingers pressed firmly over the hectic pulse at his throat. His breath hitched in a wheeze when he tried to curse at her.

She gestured indistinctly behind her and hands without faces were on him, moving on his limbs, securing him as they lifted. He would have broken their hold on him, would have fought harder if he could have just gotten his breath. They were taking him the rest of the way up the staircase and down a blank hall. Alec panicked, struggling ineffectually in their grip as they moved. The world rushed, turned and stopped abruptly in bleak yellow lamp light.

He had been set on a bed. Alec felt for utility starched sheets and metal rails but his hands grazed the scratchy pattern of quilt embroidery and the easy give of a worn mattress.

Alec winced as a dry hand was placed briefly on his forehead. Blurred faces faded in and out, his throat impossibly tight and painful, preventing him from speaking. His chest heaved uselessly and his mind reeled in fear with the knowledge that he could no longer take in enough air to sustain himself. Every attempt triggered the wracking cough and another sharp tug on his slipping consciousness. He could hear himself gasping and wheezing as he tried to push himself up. Something cold and plastic touched his face and instinctively he thrust it aside. It came again more forcefully, strong hands holding his chin back as he desperately twisted away. He thrashed against the many hands trying to hold him immobile while removing his jacket. Blind panic had made his actions as mindless as a drowning man, flailing for the surface that wasn’t there.

“Easy. Easy now.”

She wasn’t far away. The doctor was in the room and calmly speaking to him. Her voice seemed cut from the cheerless walls. Steady and proficient. Sparse and functionary.

“Deep breaths in.”

Alec had no other choice but to drag in another shaky breath. Instantly, the next inhale was easier with the steady flow of clean pure oxygen. His unwilling lungs opened and he could exhale without them seizing. He felt an elastic band being slipped over his head, holding the mask over his nose and mouth. The smell of fresh plastic saturated his dull senses as his sleeves were yanked up to bare his skin. The dim light went sallow and began eating up the fading halo of the bulb as he sank lower into a total blackout. He tensed, breath hitching frantically. The touch of warm hands gloved in latex was on his inner elbow, prepping him for the burn of an injection.

“I realize money was the only incentive that allowed me your time.”

Weakly, his fingers tugged at the mask, wanting to speak but unable. Alec panted shallowly, feeling the solid block weighing in his chest began to loosen.

“I knew I would eventually have to provide another one.”

Alec squeezed his eyes shut as another violent surge of coughing took him.

"The virus was designed to bind specifically to your leukocytes. I had intended for it to be only a mild strain but I see you've allowed it to advance."

"A-All th-this..." Alec gasped. "All this j-just for my... time?"

He thought he heard her voice soften.

"I really wish you had called sooner."

A wan smile ghosted across his lips. "I-I was wrong. You're one of them."

“Just because we’ve both spent time within their walls doesn’t mean we’re theirs.” The doctor said. “I’m as affiliated with Manticore as you are.”

“But you- you’re not—“

“Manufactured? No. Of course not.”

Alec tried to respond but what was left of his coherency was rapidly dissipating into nothing.

Tension melted away with the low hiss from the tank and the sweet, soothing numbness from whatever the needle had sent flowing through his veins. The grip of hands on his legs and arms eased as his muscles surrendered to the languid gentle crush of chemicals. Being able to breathe again was enough to convince him of their worth for the immediate time being. As long as whatever had been in that syringe wasn’t making his condition worse he was momentarily all for it. The horrific ache that had been banging against the inside of his skull for days began to gently dip down towards tolerable.

Taking a deep clear unhindered breath, he slipped under into a pain free sleep where he didn’t have to care much about anything at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As soon as Logan pulled up to the squat-like bunker, he was very well aware that his chances on gaining entry were slim.

The one man that sat in its interior wasn’t city police but privately paid security. Not being a man that indulged in much breaking and entering, Logan knew his talents for infiltration lay in another direction. His collection of fake identification, substantial aliases and all the paper work to back it up were some of his finest tools.

He had a decent story.

He was coming straight from the Harbor Lights Hospital and he wanted to know if the doctor would be available for consult during a surgery on a small child that suffered a head injury in a car accident. Unable to contact her through the usual means, he had in desperation driven personally to her home to ask for her aid. The string of coined imperatives were a cheap ploy, but emergencies involving children’s lives tended to get a person’s attention when nothing else would.

The armed guard didn’t even move back inside to the telephone.

“Real sorry to hear that,” he handed Logan back his medical credentials. “But the doctor has been overseas. Only lives here a few months out of the year.”

Logan studied the man’s face. Besides a weary stance that was typical among those forced to be alert all night long, there was no subterfuge to be seen. The only backwards glances this guy was making was to his cooling coffee and a comfortable chair that was out of the rain.

“When was the last time you’ve seen her?” Logan asked.

“Working here almost two years,” he shrugged. “Never met her once.”

He knew asking about Alec would put the man on an edge Logan didn’t want, and he knew the transgenic wouldn’t have tried walking through the front gate anyway. The buzz of rotating cameras above the guard house moved in a steady slow pass of an automated 360 degrees. There sure was a lot of protection for an empty house.

“I see.” Logan put his car into reverse. “Thank you. Have a good night.”

The man waved him goodbye.

Logan waited until he was back on the main road before he took out his phone and found the message from Max. She had been caught up at the sector point in traffic, but had decided to try using the sewer to circumvent the crowds.

The phone clicked shut in his palm.

He wouldn’t be able to reach her from all the way out here and through the addition of a few concrete layers of the drainage system. Besides, Logan wasn’t convinced Max would be able to move over the grounds with any ease despite her skills. In fact, he had a very strange sinking feeling that Alec in his incapacitated state might have already blundered through a few of its tripwires already. Hands flexing on the steering wheel, he looked back over at the entry station. If there had been some activity, that bored hired gun would have been in a different kind of mood. That man had displayed the attitude of someone exposed to long term tedium with very few thrills between. But if Alec wasn’t here, then where was he?

Logan flicked off his headlights and turned down the next cross street. The route would take him around the very outside of the private estate’s borders. He had a bad feeling that Alec had already made an attempt to gain access onto the well monitored property.

He had an even more terrible feeling that the transgenic had somehow succeeded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The smell of a wood fire reached him before the soft crackle of its tinder did.

He had been dreaming of Ames White.

Chaotic glimpses of the faraway mountain lab came brilliant and stark behind his eyelids. He watched the fire raging up the walls and fill the low subterranean passages with thick black smoke. But Alec wasn’t tucked somewhere deep under ground this time. He could still detect fresh air. His wrists and ankles weren’t shackled with the cold bite of reinforced steel.

Agent White was long gone.

Alec blinked himself awake, his pupils adjusting lazily to the half light. He blinked again until he saw the erratic patterns on the walls were made by the flames from a fireplace on the opposite side of the room. It took a moment for his night vision to kick in but it did. Spending the past few days with his sight being unreliable had been almost as miserable as not being able to breathe. Looking around with the first unhindered view he’d had in a while, he saw that the large room couldn’t be the bedroom he’d faded away in. The sofa he had been left on was old threadbare velvet, the gold fabric worn down to smooth spots of the cloth underneath. The smell of must rose from the soft thick cushions as he tentatively rose on his elbows.

With a ragged groan he cautiously sat all the way up. Rubbing his face, he dimly wondered how many different damn sofas he could possibly wake up on within one week. The sticky feel of medical tape redirected his attention to his arm. An intravenous line had been left steadily feeding him something from an unmarked drip bag set on an IV stand. Ripping the adhesive off, he slid the needle out from his vein. Alec studied the clear fluid collecting on the tip before tossing it aside. Whatever it was he didn’t need it anymore.

Another sound by the fire made him hastily get to his feet. Focusing his eyes, he saw that there was someone seated right in front of the mantle in an overstuffed chair. The only illumination in the room made their body just another shadow, their profile made pitch black by the flames.

“Uh…” Alec moved his hand over his chest, the lingering tightness making him wary of doing much more than standing. “Hello?”

He stepped closer, his mind cataloguing the position of the visible exit and the one curtained window. His memory flashed to the magnitude of technology that lay sitting out there for anything with a colorful heat signature to wander into its automated sights.

“I guess I’m not dead yet,” he didn’t have much left in his arsenal and Alec felt like goading. “But don’t worry? There’s always a next time.”

Even though he was standing directly behind the chair, the person sitting there still wasn’t saying a thing.

“Hey, buddy? You awake or what—”

He got close enough to see the back of the person’s neck. There were a set of marks on the skin that he recognized very well. Alec froze in shock.

A barcode.

So there were more transgenics around this place. Exhausted and confused, Alec was ready to channel all the anger he had left into getting some details with as much violence as required. He didn’t care if this time the powers that be got fed up with dealing with his resistance and decided to put an end to him for good. He didn’t even care if this transgenic had the strength to do it for them.

The man turned around and looked up.

Alec’s breath caught and struck in his throat.

It took him a few more seconds to start breathing again but it had nothing to do with the bug he’d been infected with. Unable to form a single word, he stared at the familiar face before his gaze dropped down to thick hefty book in the young man's lap. The sound of footsteps behind him were the light tread that he knew was the woman he had come here to kill.

“He can’t hear you.” The doctor said. “Or see you for that matter.”

Alec suddenly realized the open book contained the blank white pages of braille. However, the young man was fully aware of their presence and had his full attention turned in their vicinity. Alec could read all the hyper awareness of a transgenic that was made probably even more focused by being impaired. Besides the clothes, Alec noted that there was only one obvious significant difference in their physical appearances. Those eyes were an extremely light tint of green. A strange bleached variation of what he had. One pupil was paler than the other, almost as white as the rest of the unseeing eye.

“Wh-What—“ Alec heard himself stuttering in stunned wonder. “What’s his designation?”

“X5-496. Daniel was born exactly two years after you were.”

“You named him?”

“I never liked using those code prefixes,” she tapped the X5 named Daniel on the shoulder. He closed the book and put it aside. “Besides, I find numbers very difficult to remember.”

Alec involuntarily stepped back when the other X5 stood up. The pale fixed gaze was locked in the space over Alec’s shoulder, the brow creased with the knowledge of a stranger’s presence. Wondering if his clone had been told that one of his fellow genetic copies was here, Alec experimentally waved a hand in his face. The transgenic reacted with a uncertain frown in the doctor’s general direction.

“What the hell happened to him?” Alec asked.

“Experimental sensory augmentation.” The doctor sounded a little annoyed. “My attempt was almost successful but it all came apart in the third trimester. Very much against my counsel the surgeons tried to fix what failed in gestation. His retinas and auditory nerves were consequently destroyed at birth. However, his mental capacity is completely intact. I encourage him to vocalize but he doesn’t do it very often.”

Alec tore his eyes off the mirror image of the transgenic standing quietly in front of him. All his demands and questions were unexpectedly replaced by brand new ones.

“You were on the lab staff,” he realized. “You were on one of the genetic engineering teams?”

“I was simply one engineer assigned to one of Manticore’s countless and various projects.” The doctor admired the fire a moment before looking at him again. “I also just happened to lead the small team that managed the X5-49 series.”

Alec didn’t like how the sightless and hearing impaired X5 seemed to be listening to every word that was being said. Kneeling down in her robe and nightgown, the woman worked the iron poker between the burning logs until a trail of red sparks fluttered up into the flume.

“The X5-49 DNA template was originally planned for nine units,” she spared him a small humorless smile. “I’m only aware of the existence of eight that ever made it into production and I am currently in possession of five of them.”

Alec’s brain rattled off what little he knew of his own origins. He knew X5-493 was gone. He knew he was alive. After that he didn’t know anything except the undeniable presence of the clone standing right in front of him.

“What do you mean possession?” Alec’s voice wavered but he didn’t care. “What are we, baseball cards?”

“Alec,” she said reasonably. “Your respiratory system has been though a lot of stress. Why don’t you get some more sleep and we can talk about this all in the morning—“

“I-I don’t think so.” Alec felt his legs bump into the sofa behind him. “Thanks for making me sick and everything but I’d better be going.”

“I think you know what will happen if you try to walk out the front door.”

“Lady, I’ll take my chances.”

Alec swung into the murky hallway and got ready to make his way through the maze of unlit corridors. He would jolt his aching body to blur into a speed that hopefully his clone wouldn’t be directed or able to follow. He’d hit the outside even if he had to take some time breaking down a wall to get there. As for the bristling defense network waiting to slice him into to ribbons, well, he’d just have to deal with that troubling issue when he came to it.

Movement ahead made him lurch to a stop in his tracks.

Two identical silhouettes of matching height were waiting in the shadows at the far end of the passageway. Standing outside of the firelight’s reach, Alec didn’t need to have all the lights on to make an educated guess as to what they might look like.

Alec felt his back hit the wall and wondered how bleak the odds were of withstanding the full mile of fence that stood between this house and the main road. He quickly figured it had to be a better chance than attempting to kick two of his very own asses. With one last burst of all his diminished strength he tried to avoid that predictably dismal scenario. But his arms and knees were caught and his back made swift and brutal contact with the floor. He tried to make out their faces in the gloom and realized these were the same hands that had secured him while he had been given oxygen. These were the transgenics that had easily restrained him while he had fought back with everything he had. Thrashing in frustration he knew this fight was over before it had even started.

By their silence it was clear that two of Elaine Gaboriault’s collection had no intention of letting Alec experience the full brunt of the security system outside.

Alec felt a hard pat on his shoulder that was practically friendly.

If he didn’t know any better, it felt almost as if he was being welcomed.


	6. Chapter 6

Alec’s neck ached badly when he gingerly lifted his chin from his chest, making his next inhale sharp and short.

Experimentally he flexed his numb hands and was not surprised through his haze of waking that they were fixed tightly on either side of him. Alec heard himself groan from far away, tapering off into a weak fit of coughing. He cleared his throat and blinked, his vision going suddenly and sharply into focus.

Polished oak gleamed like honey under fresh linen napkins and sparkling silverware. Alec stared down through the lavish center of bone china and bowls filled with decorative fruit. Bunches of grapes so shiny they looked plastic. Apples ripe enough to smell like they were near rot. His eyes burned on the rows of wavering flames on silver candlesticks.

In his lifetime, Alec had been witness to many formal dining affairs but never as a guest.

The steel cuffs cinched around his wrists glittered just as prettily as the silverware. They were the good kind, doubled and reinforced with a chain that linked down to the same around his ankles. It gave him enough leeway to reach his plate but not quite enough to get to his collection of drinking glasses. Unfortunately, all he really wanted was a sip of cold water. Looking down at the array of differently shaped spoons on the side of his plate, he wondered if anything sharp had been removed so he would have no opportunity to get out of the manacles. With the right tool he could figure out the locks in no time.

Looking up at Elaine Gaboriault, he knew she was well aware of that too.

"It's still remarkable," she said casually. "I can't convey to you how wonderful it was to find out you were still alive."

Alec studied her in the dim light of the electric candelabrum overhead and the real flames of the flickering candles. She didn’t seem rested even though there had been ample time since the previous night for her to sleep. It occurred to him that she never looked particularly at ease at anytime at all.

“Yeah, about that?” Alec cocked his head at her, shifting slightly in his seat. “How the hell did you find me?”

Someone had filled all the plates at the table with food before he had woken up. It all looked very nice but the way it glistened in the light made his stomach turn.

He looked dejectedly back in the direction of his unreachable water glass.

For quite a few years in Manticore he’d been privy to countless meetings at long tables like this one. However, he was never invited to sit down with them and drink the wine poured from the crystal decanters. Every now and then a guest would stop pretending he wasn’t there and glance nervously in his direction. Alec remembered liking the acknowledgment no matter how fleeting it was. He liked the fear in their eyes when they spotted him standing immobile in their cast shadows. It was a mark of status to have been used at all. It was nothing but pure bragging rights to taunt the other X5s that had to spend their long nights staring in the dark of their barracks. Alec squeezed his eyes shut and felt the hollow absence of his long lost dedication. That missing piece hadn’t hurt in a while.

The doctor set down the slender wineglass in her hand.

“I admit, I didn’t have much hope of being anyone but another online bidder for your organs after hearing you'd been detained by that maniac.” She laughed softly in disbelief, her words ending derisively at the mention of Manticore's hired agent.

"White," Alec's lip turned up in a bitter half smile. "He's a trip."

The scent of meat going cold and the odor of contraband spices told him that the chow was first rate, but he had never been so uninterested in eating in his entire life.

She cleared her throat.

“But when the reports came in that the lab had been burnt to its foundations I immediately suspected your involvement. I had very strong hopes that you were still alive."

Alec swallowed a heavy lump in his throat and worked his fists in the restraints. "Hey, miracles happen."

“Getting out of the facility all on your own would have been just that." She had picked up a spoon and had begun poking at the meat on her plate. "You had help on the outside, of course."

Alec's thoughts turned to the long nights spent in the quiet of Logan’s apartment as his body healed and his mind did nothing at all. Max’s muted expression flashed over and over again as she silently questioned his sanity with every tentative word out of her mouth.

“I assumed you had formed a social infrastructure in the location you had been found,” she explained. “I thought there was a very high probability you would try to return to it.”

“Why?”

“Your performance follows the typical X5-49 behavioral model. The X5-49s have been noted to seek socialization. You are genetically predisposed to crave the company of others.”

“That something you put in the plan?” Alec asked dubiously.

“No.” When her wandering gaze finally engaged his, it was with a vague smile. “That aspect to your series was a complete surprise.”

She said it like it was an interesting factoid she had yet to explore from a long list of many others. Alec wondered what other shockers lay in store up and down his makeup. He considered that maybe this woman might know him so well that he might have nothing, latent or otherwise, that would alarm her. It suddenly made the majority of her unconcerned behavior in his presence make a lot more sense.

“So I came back to Seattle.” Alec tried to shrug but was hindered from doing much besides gesturing with his hands. “Never could resist the big city."

“Yes,” she agreed. “I researched for weeks in every sector I thought you might use to go to ground. It took me a very long time. Your kind is extremely adept at disappearing.”

He remembered her hopeful astonishment when they had bumped into each other in front of Jam Pony.

“But it helped that I knew precisely who I was looking for.”

“A-Are you saying you found me by accident?”

“Not exactly.” The doctor assured him. “The 49 series has a highly predictable rate of conduct and reaction to their environment particularly under duress—“

“You mean pure luck.”

“If you like the sound of that better.”

His gaze fell back onto the carefully laid table between them. “Who are all the extra plates for?”

As soon as the words had left his mouth he sensed movement in the doorway behind her. Alec didn’t know what the doctor had done but she had given some signal that the room’s privacy was no longer required. The ready presence of the other X5s reminded Alec again of his duties to his former masters. He had no doubt these transgenics were given the same orders should he make the mistake of showing any signs of hostile action towards his hostess.

They filed in one after another.

Taking a deep breath, Alec did his best to appear like he sat around in rooms filled with his clones every other day of the year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Logan tried not to be startled when the knock came hard and urgent on the passenger door window.

Disengaging the locks, he let himself relax for the first time since he had left his sector the evening before. He couldn’t tell what physical state Max was in. She never admitted her actual status unless it got so bad there was no hiding anymore. But before dawn had grayed the sky, she had confirmed Alec had without a doubt passed the perimeter. She had found his tracks headed right through enough hardware to defend a national mint. If 12 hours of trekking around the estate borders looking for the smallest chink in the armor had worn her out, she didn’t let it look like it.

“What can I say?” Max settled back in the seat as they pulled away from the curb. “The lady knows how to keep out the riff raff.”

The road was fuzzy with the rain and his exhaustion. If Max couldn’t find a way in than the place was locked up tighter than anything he could remember seeing in a real long time. In fact, the last thing he could recall being remotely as well fortified was a certain military facility.

“What are we dealing with?” Logan felt his jaw clench. “Your former employer?”

“I dunno.”

The confused tone in her voice reminded him of Alec’s own reluctance to label this wealthy doctor as a possible affiliate. Max shifted uncertainly in her seat and absently pulled at the dead leaves caught in her hair.

“Manticore never really bothered with hedge animals.”

“I’m a little worried that surveillance might’ve logged my stop at her gate,” Logan said. “She might try to identify—“

“No one can monitor this much coverage,” Max dismissed the worry with a wave of her hand. “They only rewind the feeds if something sets off any of the alarms.”

Logan drove as they both lapsed into their own silences.

He knew what Max was thinking because he was thinking it too. If Alec hadn’t tripped one single alarm, how had he walked right into the place? Logan frowned as the idea he’d been playing back and forth in his mind finally solidified into a horrible answer. He’d been thinking about it all day long as he slowly drove in circles around countless acres of property hidden by a carefully planted shroud of forest.

“He’s alive.” Logan said simply.

He stared ahead at the rush of traffic jammed up into the intersection that would lead them back towards the crowded next sector. There were lots of reasons to keep a transgenic alive. None of them were pleasant. But whatever the hell this wealthy woman wanted, she wanted it alive and breathing. That meant they had some time.

“There’s another way in.” Max announced.

Logan looked at her sideways. It looked like she’d been doing some thinking of her own.

“It’s not as fun as slithering under some electrified barbwire but it might work.”

Logan couldn’t help it. Max could always make him smile.

“Where do we start?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although the doctor had said she owned five X5-49s, only three of them entered the room.

Alec immediately saw he was not going to have any trouble whatsoever telling them apart. They might have all come from the same gene sequence but there were some not so subtle differences no matter how indistinguishable the DNA. The only one that utterly resembled him at all was the clone he had already formally been introduced to.

She had called him Daniel.

Although sightless, the impaired transgenic found a chair with no difficulty and sat down. The next transgenic that seated himself looked nothing like Alec at all. They might have shared the same basic facial features but everything else about the transgenic was wan and thin. The muscle definition of a typical X5 was completely absent. This man was unusually pale and his clothing covered every inch of his lean frame except his face. Even his hands were covered by thin black gloves. Alec didn’t feel very threatened by his presence, even if the guy had had a part in getting him into the restraints. From across the table, Alec could smell illness and see a feeble weakness to his movements. Daniel didn’t worry him too much either. Mentally capable transgenic or not, impaired was still impaired.

Alec looked up briefly at the electric bulbs in the dining room lamp and then imagined how many unlit spaces this enormous structure contained. He decided he wouldn’t worry about Daniel as long as the lights stayed on. He honestly had no desire to fight in a total black out with someone that knew nothing else.

He studied the third and final arrival.

The last one to enter the room was a completely different story. The transgenic’s stance was aggressive. His body language indicated displeasure, aggravation and impatience. He made immediate eye contact and didn’t break it when Alec returned the unfriendly gesture. There was nothing on him that didn’t set off every warning sign imbued in the perpetual solider Alec had been created to be.

This transgenic was the last to take a seat.

Although there was a free chair beside the others, the X5 deliberately sat at the head of the table opposite Alec. Like Daniel, his musculature was entirely solid. Alec dismally took in the sight of the numerous scars on the transgenic’s exposed flesh. The slashes of white scar tissue crisscrossed his hands, neck and face. Alec studied the marks and wondered why only one X5-49 of the set would have so many surgical procedures performed and not any of the others. This one also had his hair shaved down in a per functionary military style. Considering none of his fellow clones had the severe haircut, Alec considered it might have been a choice. When Alec took another glance at them all, they were all wearing different types of clothing instead of any kind of uniform.

The two X5s with obvious working sight were watching Alec openly with unabashed curiosity. Daniel sat quietly but also had his head turned slightly in Alec’s general direction.

Alec cleared his throat under the awkward scrutiny.

“So?” he asked the doctor. “Do any of them talk?”

“I do,” the scarred transgenic announced with a raised hand. “I can talk.”

“Fantastic.” Alec decided to ask him about the strange lack of cutlery at the table. “What’s with all the spoons?”

The doctor suddenly seemed a little embarrassed.

“Gabriel had a small incident last week.” She said.

“Just call it what it was, Elaine.”

Gabriel was a pretty name for the rough transgenic with the thick scar slanting neatly across his neck. The use of her given name irked the doctor but there came no reprimand.

“Until the issue is resolved there will be no knives or forks at the table.”

Alec tried not to stare at him. When that X5 spoke there was a nervous edge to his mirth that made Alec’s simmering caution rise to a boil. He began to consider that the marks on his skin might not have been put there by a doctor’s scalpel at all. When Alec looked closer, some of them were in set patterns and bizarrely defined shapes.

They appeared to all be self inflicted.

The speaking X5 named Gabriel pulled Daniel’s hands to the table where he quickly found his plate and everything else placed uniformly around it. When Daniel found the water glass empty he impatiently tapped it on the table until the pitcher rattling with ice was slid in his direction.

“And you?” Alec pointed to the thin copy next to him who was listening to them all closely. “You talk?”

The doctor shook her head.

“Michael was born with a crippling immune deficiency," she dabbed at her mouth with the linen napkin on her lap. "Instead of immediate disposal he was assigned to a series of contagious disease trials. Several long term infections rendered him mute and damaged his immune system beyond repair. We keep the house environment fairly sterile but his health would be compromised severely by exposure to even a mundane pathogen.”

Alec immediately took his hands off the table, the thought of his infection causing him to jerk his chair back in a mild involuntary panic.

“They’ve all been vaccinated,” she informed him. “It’s perfectly safe.”

The pale transgenic’s responsive smile made it perfectly clear he could see and hear just fine. In fact, he helpfully held up his gloved fingers in a quick succession of numbers. The last being seven.

497

So Michael was X5-497. Daniel was X5-496. Alec made the hazy deduction that Gab over there most likely X5-495. So where were the two others she claimed to own? There weren’t any other places set at the table so Alec guessed that wherever they were, they apparently weren’t allowed to eat with the grownups.

Micheal made a deft series of hand signs towards the doctor. Whatever it was, made Gabriel laugh and the doctor’s lips pull in a terse line. The entire exchange made Alec’s headache double behind his eyes.

“So what is this?” Alec sighed. “Some kind of happy little family?”

The doctor considered him before she poured herself some more wine.

“I’m completely aware that stepping into a cage means that I run a high risk of personal injury,” her gaze flickered towards Gabriel before passing over the others. “Even with subjects I’ve hand reared from the adolescent stages of development.”

Alec recalled the heavy duty security that spanned the surrounding acres and wondered what would happen to one of her pets if they tried to make a break for it. He shifted uncomfortably as Daniel reached for and almost knocked over his water glass. His gaze then wandered to the pale skin of the immune deficient transgenic sitting at his side. He had to admit it wouldn’t matter much if those two even had a yellow brick road to freedom. They wouldn’t last long on the outside, enhanced or no.

But that was the commonality in all them wasn’t it? Each one was defective. Ill made. Unusable by Manticore’s strict standards of perfection. The mistakes that were unlucky enough to draw in a first breath in those labs tended not to experience much beyond that, let alone their first birthday.

“You kept them.” Alec said with abrupt comprehension. “You brought them here instead of destroying them.”

“I prefer to thinking of it as salvaging?” she replied. “I find a certain… inspiration in surrounding myself with my own failures.”

“I prefer to think of myself as a work in progress.” Gabriel held up the twin scars that decorated the insides of his wrists.

Alec envisioned what his entire body must look like. A jig jagged canvas of his own warped making. The doctor’s response to the statement was what Alec had seen her do frequently to himself. She ignored the transgenic named Gabriel completely and continued with her dinner.

The table settled awkwardly back to the task of eating.

Alec searched their faces for any sign of muted obedience or hatred towards their keeper. There was nothing like it to be found. Daniel of course wasn’t party to the conversation that was taking place but the other two were listening to her with shades of patience as if it were the regular state of affairs. But Alec knew any one of these X5s, deficient as the doctor had deemed them, were capable of snapping this woman’s neck with their bare hands whenever the whim might strike. What he really didn’t understand was what exactly was stopping them.

His curiosity must have been obvious.

“I have other security systems in place,” she assured him. “Should the need arise.”

The group at the table was suddenly completely quiet. The idle tapping of utensils and shifting in chairs stopped as her warning was meant to carry to all of them and not just the new arrival. Even Daniel sensed the change in mood and turned his head uneasily in the doctor’s direction. So much for being a happy little family.

He looked again at the variations of his face around the table. All of them he dimly realized were slightly younger than he was. But there was still no fear there. Not real fear. Her battle won pride of their survival was like someone’s detached affection for difficult but prized purebred animals. She had somehow saved every one of the defective X5’s from the Manticore chopping block when they were still young children. They couldn’t have known much more than this woman and her rules since they had been somehow smuggled out from the facility. If they regarded her with anything at all, it was with wary respect. The cautious pieces of insubordination were practiced by those who knew punishment was dangerous but not lethal.

It wasn’t Manticore but it sure smelled the same.

His gaze fell back on Gabriel. He couldn’t exactly see why this one had needed a rescue from a quick sleep by injection, and a slow unconscious death as his organs were used and his spare parts farmed. There weren’t any obvious physical symptoms like the other two X5-49s. Alec thought of X5-493 and wondered if his twin had had the same nervous frantic look flashing in his eyes.

When he didn’t move to partake any of his own food, a gloved hand nudged his plate closer to him. He looked up into familiar green eyes and saw no menace there. Michael. Alec’s rote memorization of Christian mythology brought up what little he knew of the namesake.

Patron Saint of Chivalry. That figured. Alec paused as the chosen designations suddenly dropped down into a row of meaningful context.

Daniel. Michael. Gabriel.

“The names,” Alec said. “T-They’re all names of angels.”

The doctor shared her elusive small smile again.

“The original project name was called Canaan,” she was embarrassed again. “I always found it easier to label assignments according to a theme.”

So this lady had some idealistic poetry in her soul. You didn’t meet tons of those walking down the cinderblock walls of government research laboratories. The paradox of the woman made his head start to hurt again.

“Oh yeah?” Alec smirked. “Where’s Lucifer?”

The doctor’s mood all at once became troubled by the jeer aimed at her work. She put down her wineglass uncomfortably, her fine boned hands rearranging the napkin on her lap before she decided to respond.

“Lucien..." she corrected evenly. "...is in the basement.”

Alec waited for those present with the ability to hear to laugh at the unexpected joke, but instead everyone followed the doctor’s lead and resumed eating.

“I’m very encouraged by the first phase of your profiling,” she told him. “I did as much as possible in the field where you were more comfortable.”

All the questions. Hours and hours of her meaningless questions. Alec blinked down at his untouched food as his eyes stung in frustration. The inquires weren’t so random after all. It was precisely the blanket field of subject matter that could compose a basic psychological profile.

“It was impossible to get a hold of any intel of the procedures they performed on you in White’s custody. Therefore I really do look forward to your continued cooperation for phase two.”

Her words hung over the table like the smoke spluttering from the candles. Alec felt his hands begin to shake. A light sweat broke out on his face as his skin flashed from hot to cold.

“If your white blood cell count is back up to where I’d like it, we will start tomorrow morning.”

Alec felt his jaw tremble as he braced himself for what he should say. He had no doubt of this woman’s ability to harm him. But all he had to offer was his resistance. His absolute refusal to participate in the game everyone who touched him wanted so badly to play. If his cooperation was required, she wouldn’t get it.

Her fist made a shocking loud sound when it slammed down on the table.

“Why do you think you are here, Alec?”

He blinked at the bitter resentment in her voice.

“Do you think I spent my lifespan dedicated to perfecting this science so you could rot in that disgusting sector and work a meaningless job for a few pennies an hour?”

The transgenics that were capable of following the exchange became nervous and diverted their eyes.

“There are billions of people on this planet,” she said with an angry calm. “They are all born into the world as randomly and needlessly as the next. But not you. You were earned by my labor. You were prepared by me and constructed for my pursuits. Unlike all the blundering masses that sweat and toil on this earth, you were actually created for an exact and precise purpose.”

Alec stared at her.

“And that purpose belongs to me.”

Alec’s vision blurred as his eyes started to burn. There were no smart ready answers to toss back in the face of her rage. Every clever retort formed and died on his lips as he dazedly understood that every one of her words was absolute truth.

He was meat.

He was property.

No matter what spin he chose to put on it or how many freedoms he had gained, it always came down to another act of forced supplication. The candlelight went gauzy with his watering eyes, his chest hitching as he fought not to be sick all over the gleaming table before him. The mute transgenic at his side pushed at his plate again, including some succinct hand signs that Alec didn’t have to understand to get the message.

Numbly, he looked down and picked up one of his spoons in a shaking fist.

If there was one thing he knew how to do well it was this.

Comply.


	7. Chapter 7

A neatly made bed with a broad bay window wasn’t exactly what he had in mind when he was told he’d be shown his quarters.

The wood floors had the kind of carpets made overseas and woven by hand. They were the rare expensive type he would step around if he had been alone. It was only after he had taken a few bright green pills that the restraints finally came off. She had held the medication in her palm and gently pushed them into his mouth as if he was a helpless child that would take too much time to perform a task on his own. A glass of water was tipped to his lips before her palm pushed firmly up under his chin to make sure he swallowed them all.

Alec felt he should have told her not to bother sedating him.

He had no intentions of doing her or anyone else any harm. After the door shut quietly behind her, he stared at his new prison for a while. Pulling apart the bedding he found clean sheets in diminishing shades of crimson that seemed to match the walls and mahogany wardrobes. He dimly realized the fall of the curtains and the nearby upholstered chair were also in various similar shades. Unlike most of the rooms he’d seen in the house, this space had been purposely decorated to be pleasing to the eye. It was a particular primary color off the spectrum that Alec had mentioned to the doctor during one of her confounding interviews.

Everything surrounding him was in a variation of red.

“B-Brick.” It wasn’t until he heard the word slur from his mouth that he realized how powerful the small pills were. “My favorite.”

Upon closer examination the comfortable inviting room appeared to have been engineered to be much more than that.

The bed was a solid piece of furniture, the thick mattress fused to the floor with no box spring that would contain any metal or wood. Alec’s hands could make out the smooth yield of soft plastic that was used in place of any metal piece that was small or slight enough to be used as a tool. There was no bed frame at all, the headboard nothing but a fixed ornament above the pile of down feather pillows. After searching the chairs, tables and dresser he found everything had been glued in its construction. Anything that wasn’t capable of being held together with super epoxy simply wasn’t there at all.

Alec was surprised to find the window had a nice view of the terraced gardens. A sprawl of grass that ended into some artfully placed islands of simulated forest. Although every effort had been made to block it, the city skyline could be seen just over the tree tops. The plexiglass panes opened up to the crisp cold air of dawn. Alec noted the lack of handholds and the daunting distance to the ground from the third floor. But it didn’t matter if he could climb down easily or not. Bars weren’t necessary with the invisible cage that existed all around the structures’ exterior.

He had found a walk in closet filled with simple clothes that he had no doubt would fit him perfectly. There were a few book shelves that were empty as if they had been left that way to fill at his leisure. The attached bathroom was for some reason the biggest shock of all.

Thinking about the cameras he couldn’t see, Alec slowly shed his clothes and left them on the floor. Stepping onto pristine white ceramic he started the water that fell unexpectedly overhead like rainfall. It became boiling hot in moments as opposed to the slow crawl he had to withstand in his own apartment. He put his hands against ivory tile, the clean white grout between them devoid of the grit and mold he had gotten used to seeing whenever he had to bathe. There were no gleaming fixtures to contemplate wrenching free from the walls. Everything was touch activated, even the installed dispensers that delivered small handfuls of shampoo and soap. He found a fresh towel that smelled like it had never been used. Stepping over the clothes he’d been wearing for a few days, Alec didn’t bother looking through the drawers of the wardrobe for anything else to wear. The thought of the synthetic sharp smell of factory fresh fabric made his stomach churn.

The view of the far off city had been obscured by a lazy descent of mist. The white out caused the green lawn to abruptly end a dozen yards from the stone terrace of the mansion’s rear grounds. He swallowed back a surge of claustrophobia as the fog drifted sluggishly through the cut shrubs, eating up the ground and closing him off from the rest of the world.

His internal clock told him he was approximately 45 minutes late for his morning shift on the Jam Pony floor.

Alec crawled into the massive bed and decided to do what the pills wanted.

He closed his eyes and went to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blinking at the dark windows he knew immediately that twilight had not just dimmed the cloudy sky.

His biological chronometer wasn’t minute to minute but he clocked it at the end of early morning. He stretched under the thick blankets and swore under his breath. Sitting up, he groggily rubbed at his eyes and considered the pills the doctor had fed him. Whatever they were had allowed him to sleep an entire day and most of the night away. He had never slept so much and so soundly in his life. Expecting a blurry edge of a chemical hangover, he found his head was rested and clear. Alec paused when he realized someone had visited his room while he had been out of it.

There was a covered tray sitting on the table under the window.

Alec’s hand wandered to his belly and the vague relief that his body had a desire to eat again. Hoping like hell that the tray was hiding something edible, he flung the warm bed covers off and ignored the chill on his bare skin.

To his disappointment, removing the silver lid revealed nothing but a flat hand held computer. Alec flipped the small interface open and watched it quickly boot up with no software logo or company serialization. Without even a stutter onto some serene wallpaper, it immediately accessed a series of files which exploded across the screen like a sliding deck of cards. All of the files had been marked with Alec’s name and Manticore designation. Looking at the first of layered windows, he saw the pages of a multiple choice survey. The next window was more of the same. As he dug deeper, they varied slightly in format and application. Modified aptitude assessments. Rorschach’s ink blots for free response. Combat scenario models. True or false. Fill in the blank. Essay answers. There were thousands of generic exams that didn’t bother disguising themselves as custom made neuropsychological tests.

So this was the second stage of the profiling.

Alec recognized them because he had taken them all before. He'd spent half a year submitting to never ending tests exactly like them when he had been confined to the psychological operations department back at Manticore. He had been detained in PSY/OPS after his genetic copy, X5-493, had been found busy on the outside losing his mind. They hadn’t given Alec any details about the extent of his twin’s descent into lunacy, but their precautions spoke louder than any gruesome digitally enhanced crime scenes. The methods to assure themselves that X5-494 wasn’t going to snap in a similar manner had been extreme. Towards the end of that intense evaluation Alec had felt very close to proving his handlers fears and going off the deep end himself.

But even when he believed his sanity had been all but neatly scraped away by their labors, he still held on tightly to the threads of reality. He counted 179 days go by before he saw daylight again, and when he did, all he could do was smile. He’d come out on the other side of their brutal examinations completely intact. No matter what his keepers inflicted on him to incite his supposed latent madness, it hadn’t worked.

Whatever lay lurking in his DNA wasn’t in control. He was.

“Gaboriault would have loved you, Ben.” Alec mumbled to the dead twin he’d never met. “She’d put your crazy ass right up on the mantle.”

Crossing his arms over his bare chest he realized he was shivering.

He looked reluctantly at the closet full of warm clothes.

Wondering if there was any kind of deadline for his massive assignment, his hands explored the shelves that lined the closet walls. He immediately found something in the depths that was made of one of the softest material he’d ever felt. The sweater was gray and the sleeves fit nicely over the palms of his hands. Covering the rest of himself with what he discovered hanging ironed and folded, he rubbed his stomach again. The compact computer tablet sat waiting on the table, its cursor blinking expectantly on the first of its countless exercises.

Maybe if he got this shit over with quickly he’d get something out of it.

Like some pancakes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oddly enough it was hunger alone that motivated him to finally do it.

Alec approached the closed door cautiously and with a lump in his throat.

He’d been avoiding it because he kept imagining the doctor sitting somewhere in her labyrinth in front of hundreds of close circuit cameras. He didn’t want to provide anyone with a show as he uselessly struggled with the bolted entrance of his enclosure. The idea of any such event being recorded for study made him clench his jaw and swallow back a wave of nausea despite his hunger pains. He wasn’t quite sure how to go about demanding something other than water from his bathroom sink, but there was no doubt whatsoever that he was being monitored in some fashion or another. Hesitating at the door, Alec’s training slid down into place and made up his mind for him. Eliminate all possibilities before pursuing the most arduous.

He froze in place when the fierce twist he gave the knob gave way easily in his hands. To his wide eyed bafflement, the door swung open freely on its hinges. The sudden comprehension that he’d spent over 24 hours locked up in an unlocked room made him want to put his fist through something.

“I was wondering when you were going to come out of there.”

Alec knew that trying to pretend that the other X5’s presence hadn’t startled him was a lost cause. The transgenic in question was easily identifiable by the short cropped hair and numerous scars. There was that and the simple fact that the man was able to speak when none of his fellow clones could. Gabriel was seated with his arms crossed in a chair tipped back up against the wall like he’d been waiting a while. He was wearing a sweater that looked a lot like Alec’s but in a deep green. Alec briefly hypothesized about the science of preference and if a guy could be genetically predisposed to like the feel of pricey angora on skin.

Alec glanced up and down the unknown area. The hallway outside the room was dark like most of the house usually seemed to be. His door was the very last at the end of the corridor, the bend of the passageway hiding whatever lay beyond.

Gabriel let his teetering chair thud loudly back down onto the floor.

“Didn’t you hear that we crave socialization?”

“Yeah,” Alec’s memory of the cozy family dinner was a little hazy but he was always good with recalling the highlights. “I heard a lot.”

Stepping away from the doorway, he peered down through the gloom and saw only one other door before spotting the thick scroll of the main staircase’s banister.

“That’s Daniel’s room,” Gabriel told him. “The fourth floor is mine.”

Alec imagined how much space an entire floor was comprised of. He could fit about three of his apartments in his own room alone. He was about to go ahead and ask what all the extra space was needed for but he had another much more pressing issue weighing on his mind. It was the troubling absence of the woman who owned the house.

“So?” He tried to sound causal. “Where’s the doc?”

“With Michael,” Gabriel answered offhandedly. “He’s sick. Again.”

Alec wondered how many times the doctor had prolonged the weak transgenic’s life.

“When his battery gets low she stays in the infirmary with him.”

“Why doesn’t she just let him die?”

Gabriel gave Alec a smile that looked as close to easy and normal as he’d seen.

“Maybe you haven’t noticed.” He said. “But Elaine has a thing about bringing things back from the brink.”

“You could leave,” Alec said tentatively. “You could try to get out.”

"I have a TV," Gabriel looked him up and down with a vague expression of disgust. “It looks like it’s a real great time out there.”

Alec really had no good argument against that sentiment.

Movement at his right caught his attention.

Before he could think, his neurons were firing off in a quiet explosion of combat readiness. The murky light sizzled into focus as his body registered a potential threat and his pupils rapidly readjusted. He raised his hands as the distance and proportions of his immediate surroundings were catalogued swiftly and efficiently for best possible use. However, when he saw no measures were being taken against him, he forced his body to stand down.

It was the X5 named Daniel. He was standing timidly in the shadows, his pale green eyes strangely focused in concentration.

Gabriel’s lack of reaction to the unannounced arrival didn’t surprise Alec. He could contribute the unconcern to the familiarity the clones must have had with one another. However the scarred transgenic’s dismissal of Daniel’s stealthy approach made Alec think of something else. For the first time he considered that these X5s were soldiers in the blueprint stages only. He doubted the doctor had sent her boys through the motions of becoming trained killers on these finely trimmed grounds. It didn’t make them any less dangerous but it sure would change the odds around here. But Alec had no idea how to glean any kind of information from the doctor’s collection. He couldn’t tell if there was any side to be on, let alone any loyalty. These clones never had a side to pick so why would they now? Alec decided to see what would happen if he could piss Gabriel off.

“So what is this place really?” he asked. “A private freak show for damaged goods?”

“A show needs a crowd,” Gabriel said. “All we got is the good doctor. But you’re right? She got herself a nice bunch of freaks.”

Alec looked uncertainly at the blind transgenic standing nearby.

“Except for Daniel,” Gabriel’s smile faltered. “He’s fucking perfect.”

Unsure if he was hearing a harsh joke, Alec studied Gabriel for any sign that there was a punch line on its way but there didn’t seem to be one forthcoming. Alec recalled the doctor mentioning how the blind X5 had been born intact. He’d only been damaged by unnecessary surgery. Gabriel’s voice had changed, his tone deepening into frustration.

“He never gets sick, he never gets angry and he never gets tired.“

In the great big scheme of horrors Manticore could draw out of your genes for fun, Alec could see why Gabriel might compare Daniel’s state of health to flawlessness.

“All he does is read books.” Gabriel added. “Long, boring, books. I’ve never been a fan of the classics myself. I’m much more stimulated by my contemporaries. They don’t go trying to make pain into epic poetry.”

Alec was waiting for Daniel to say or … gesture something but the X5 hadn’t moved any closer. He couldn’t possibly be listening to their conversation but Alec was well aware of what information air pressure, vibration and scent could provide a healthy transgenic. In a way, the guy was probably hanging on every word.

“Don’t worry,” Gabriel said. “You can say anything about him you want. He can’t hear a damn thing.”

Alec raised an eyebrow when the impaired X5 raised a middle finger right in Gabriel’s direction.

“You see?” Gabriel snorted and got to his feet. “He’s useless.”

Alec tried to wrap his mind around Gabriel’s conflicting statements and body language that shifted from submissive to hostile all in one breath. Someone back at the labs had screwed up big time. Alec experienced an unanticipated twinge of sympathy for the X5 with the pained agitation flickering constantly in his eyes. In fact, the steadily growing frantic edge in Gabriel’s gaze made Alec involuntarily start to back up. But instead of any flare of unpredictable violence, the scarred hands simply twitched nervously before grabbing the back of the chair.

“Good luck with everything.” The heavy wood seat was dragged behind him as Gabriel made his exit. “And don’t let Elaine get to you. She’s all bite and no bark.”

Alec watched him vanish up the stairs to his fourth floor, the chair banging noisily on every step. Suddenly all alone with Daniel, Alec shifted uncomfortably and was undecided about what to do next. To his relief, it was the silent X5 that initiated communication between them.

Daniel nodded towards Gabriel’s retreating footsteps then took an index finger and rotated it around his ear.

Alec returned the smile even though the other X5 couldn’t see it. Maybe that nut job with all the scars was right? Daniel probably was the only lucid person upright and walking these halls. He didn’t mean to step back when Daniel extended a hand. Feeling like an idiot, Alec saw that all the guy had was a small piece of paper. When nothing seemed to be happening, the other X5 shook it to make the intention clear.

Alec grudgingly took it.

The printed words were simple and to the point. Alec figured most communication for a man like him would have to be if you wanted to get through the day like anyone else. It made him think of why he might like all those books. All they were was one conversation after another that he could sit in on and not have to struggle to listen. Alec realized that Daniel couldn’t see him nodding in affirmation to the neatly typed inquiry on the paper.

“Um yeah, sure? I know sign language.” Alec words were as useless as the nod. “I mean uh—“

Alec took a deep breath and touched Daniel’s hand. He closed the transgenic’s fist over his and spelled “S-u-r-e” into his palm. As soon as he did it he wondered why he hadn’t just done the one and simple sign of “Yes.” But Daniel’s small smile seemed to indicate an appreciation of nuance even if it was redundant. Alec was also glad he was understood at all considering the signs he had observed the sickly mute make at the table the evening before. They hadn’t been anything close to recognizable to those he’d been taught in training. But basic sign language and combat code were as fresh in his memory as the 13 languages he could write and speak fluently.

Daniel dropped Alec’s fist and signed in the air so quickly that Alec almost missed it.

_Follow me._

Alec took one look back at his room and the waiting computer before giving a short sigh of reprieve. Tagging along with an unknown clone into the dark of the unfriendly landscape of his incarceration was the best offer he’d been given in days.

The pile of homework could wait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Logan did as he was told and waited in the car.

The truth was that he was perfectly content with not stepping into that alleyway to join the talk Max was currently engaged in. None of the congregated group looked particularly pleased to be there and none of them were shy about the weapons they carried all over their person. He thought the exchange would take some time but it appeared to break up almost as quickly as it had formed.

She was walking back to the car before he could start to even guess the outcome of the negotiations.

“Our doctor friend only lets a screened crew on the property.” Max told him as she got in. “They get paid double time in the spring.”

“How often?”

“Once a week.” She said. “Like clock work.”

Logan sat back in faint disbelief. Of all the possibilities he’d conjured since Alec had taken off, the last thing he would have thought of to gain access was to impersonate a pay by the hour gardener.

“When’s the next mowing?”

“Monday.”

It was hard not to bruise a fist on the steering wheel like he wanted too. A weekend was a lot of time for plenty of stuff to happen. However, his worry was vaguely assuaged by the set up of his own hardware around the Gaboriault property. It wasn’t quite possible to match the defense grid camera for camera, but Logan’s system was watching for any vehicles moving in and out of the compound. He also had a line tapped for any use of her helipad. As far as he knew Alec was still in there somewhere. The state of the transgenic’s wellbeing was a complete unknown but having a physical location was a luxury Logan didn’t always have the pleasure of enjoying.

“So can this Cheng guy can get us in?”

“He said he can try.” She gestured that he should start the car and get moving. “We’ll know for sure on Monday morning. He said legit subs come in from time to time with all the cheap labor headed north.”

It was Max’s turn to realize that the weekend was going to be a mighty long wait.

“So what do we do until then?”

“Well.” Logan said. “There’s a dinner party downtown.”

“Not really in a party kinda mood.”

“It’s a charity fundraiser.” Logan explained. “Gowns, tuxes, the works. You’re going to be my date.”

“Why would I do something like that?”

“Because although every member of her security staff believes she’s spends most of the year in France, I don’t think Elaine Gaboriault has left her current address since she moved here.”

Max waited for more.

“The woman hasn’t missed a single one of these charity balls in about 20 years.”

“She’s gonna be there?” Max sat up in her seat. “Like in real life punchable person?”

“She sure is.” Logan said. “And the fundraiser database has her listed as an attendee and donator for the auction. It’s a real famous one too. Always brings money from all over the world to do some big spending and tax write offs all in one go.”

“Okay?” Max nodded. “Now get to the good part that you aren’t telling me.”

“The database included another piece of info for the VIP seating arrangements.” He said. “Dr. Gaboriault will be requiring two seats. That means she’s bringing a guest.”

Logan looked over at Max when she didn’t respond.

“You don’t think—“

“I have no idea what to think.”

Max slumped back against her window.

“Looks like I’m going dress shoppin’ again.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the time they had passed the second floor with no flashing red lights and a keening siren, Alec got the picture.

No voice was going to start booming over an intercom to inform them that they were in violation of regulations. The motion detection alarms were going to stay dead no matter how many cameras they passed. The doctor’s wards were apparently allowed free reign of their environment. It made perfect sense not to waste time and energy confining any of them to solitary rooms when the house itself was one immense and highly proficient lockdown.

And practically empty.

But a budding career in theft on the outside had taught Alec that no house was completely bare no matter how it might appear. Everyone had a place where they kept the good stuff hidden away from those inclined to take it. He thought of the forbidden cutlery that Gabriel had somehow made off limits. A knife, even if it had been created to spread butter, would be a useful tool if he could get his hands on one.

He trailed the other X5 through another hall and down a back staircase that would have been installed for servants had there been any present. If Alec was speculating that the clones had been raised and kept here for the majority of their lives, his assumption was reinforced by the effortless navigation the impaired transgenic employed around every step and corner. The few obstacles of furniture or a shut door were dealt with no trouble whatsoever. By the time they reached their destination, Alec had half forgotten that his guide couldn’t see or hear a thing.

To his unmitigated joy, they had arrived to a kitchen.

Catching sight of another touch screen, Alec tried activating the overhead lamps but they didn’t work. Most of the house’s electrical system seemed like it had never been hooked up at all. Only the bare minimum had been bothered with and it appeared to be confined to a room to room basis. With a house filled with X5s, Alec guessed making sure everything was well lit wasn’t really a huge priority. He pulled open what looked like the first of three industrial sized refrigerators and was happy to see they were functioning fine. There were provisions and lots of them.

So besides the formal family dining they were meant to feed, clothe, and take care of themselves? No wonder none of them were beating the doors down to get out of here. Alec’s speculation was disrupted by the sight of a roasted chicken and several plastic drawers filled with fresh fruit. He hadn’t seen this much good food in one place in a real long time.

“It’s like you read my mind.” Alec mumbled to his savior.

He paused uncertainly and regarded the quiet transgenic with slight suspicion.

“You can’t do that can you? Read minds?”

Daniel unwittingly disproved that unlikelihood by knocking the counter to attract the attention he’d already unknowingly had.

“Go ahead.” Alec tapped the counter back in response. “I’m listening. Or looking. Or whatever.”

The kitchen was lit dimly only by the open fridge but Alec caught the gist of the rapid hand signs. There was definitely an “extra”, a “cheese” and “make it quick” in there. Alec blinked when he realized he’d just been demanded to make a sandwich with specifications.

“Great. A smartass.” Alec found real sliced cheese that wasn’t the processed kind. “Must be another gem in that whole predisposition thing.”

He tossed a loaf of bread on the table and searched around a surprising amount of normal everyday fare. It was above average, but standard nonetheless. There were no stock military rations to be seen. No pure protein formulas. No chilled vials of vitamin supplements labeled for each recipient. With a small sound of disbelief he felt his fingertips graze bumps of braille tags that were helpfully placed on all the assorted food. If this doctor knew anything than she should know that even if someone got cute and switched the mayo with the mustard that an impaired X5 would be able tell the difference probably before an able one would. But the thing was that she did know that. Alec sighed at the sight of Daniel sitting at the end of the counter and observing his activity attentively with his pale off centered gaze.

The effort to identify items for the blind X5 seemed more like a polite courtesy or an act of kindness. His thoughts turned unwillingly to the immune deficient transgenic fighting to keep a tenuous hold on life in a medical ward somewhere within the building. He ground his teeth at the image of the doctor patiently monitoring the frail transgenic’s vitals throughout the night and into the dawn.

Alec angrily slammed the fridge closed and immediately felt like an asshole when the act caused Daniel to jerk in his seat.

But Alec just didn’t get it. He didn’t want to get it. He couldn’t figure out what was worse. Being treated like a mindless machine back in that factory in Wyoming or being gently handled like a subservient and equally mindless house pet.

Daniel distracted him with some more signing.

Apparently he wanted some milk to go with that chow Alec was busy not preparing. His aching stomach prompted him to get back to the task at hand. Instead of shoving what he found directly into his mouth, he forced himself to assemble it into sandwiches like a human being. As he worked, Alec looked around the room and considered how much more of the mansion was available to wander unhindered in. Gazing through the opposite doorway that continued out into the dark maze of the corridors, he wondered where the doctor’s other prized failures might be kept.

The weird joke about the angel in the basement flashed unpleasantly in his head.

Alec sat down heavily with the results of his hasty labor and slid the second plate in front of the other X5. The blind transgenic flipped the bread over to check if the request for extra cheese had been fulfilled. A leaf of lettuce was detected and picked off before he proceeded to reconstruct the sandwich and begin eating it. The discovery of the container of milk was accompanied by a brief search for a glass that Alec forgot to include. Upon not finding one, Alec appreciated it when the clone just went ahead and drank from the carton.

“I don’t worry you at all, huh?” He asked as he took some of the milk for himself. “That’s okay. Feeling is mutual.”

Eating in the dark had never bothered Alec much.

It sure as hell didn’t bother Daniel.

 

tbc


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iheartdaniel

Alec folded the thin computer closed and listened to the almost imperceptible whir of its shut down.

Sitting at what had become his work desk, he looked out the broad window and knew that a noon day sun was shining somewhere over the churn of dark clouds. With the immune deficient X5 taking up the doctor’s attention, Alec found his assignments completed by the next day and no more immediately forthcoming.

Every time he had opened another one of the exams he thought about hurling the piece of machinery hard enough to possibly crack the shatter proof plastic that imitated glass in the panes. Each time he described his emotional reaction towards an ink blot or debated another ill-disguised barometer of morality, he swallowed back a surge of nausea. While total noncompliance was a nice thought, he had a few good reasons not to act on that instinct. The first was that no matter how randomly or nonsensically he filled out the forms, their long and unremitting nature would assemble patterns from his thought process regardless of his attempts. The second reason was what made Alec not only answer them truthfully, but quickly and efficiently in a speed she would expect. He didn’t want the doctor to get any idea that he might be unstable in any way.

He wanted to make sure that she knew he was psychologically intact.

She’d said she liked to surround herself with her failures. That she seemed at ease with her control over them was evident in their regard to her. But Alec hadn’t seen the entire proclaimed collection sitting at the dinner table. There had been two missing. Apparently there were some surviving mistakes that didn’t get the same privileges as the rest and Alec wasn’t eager to find out what that meant. Rain streamed down the windows as another storm cell drifted overhead. He was suddenly reminded of his own apartment, the air cutting the cold so close that he could see his breath and wished the untouched quiet could be smothered by the comforting babble of random television.

Alec had privately wondered a few times how great it would be to sit around in pajamas all the time, but he was starting to miss the feel of real clothes. He nervously rubbed his hands on the soft fabric of his cotton pants. At this point he’d settle for anything that wasn’t meant to be as comfy and pliable as possible. Every item in the closet was as fit to wear to bed as it was to walk around in. He pushed the computer away and gnawed at his lip. Just because he’d completed every test to the best of his ability didn’t guarantee his safety. What if he wasn’t as healthy as he thought he was? The truly deranged were usually firmly convinced of their own sanity.

“Psychologically intact.” Alec mumbled. “That’d be a neat trick—”

He shut up with a stifled groan of frustration.

It had been difficult to stop talking to himself. He had no idea how much it had become a normal function for him when he was alone until he’d tried to discontinue it. Ever since his services with Manticore had abruptly ended, he noticed the habit got a lot worse and it was usually when he was afraid. Glancing apprehensively at the dim corners and freshly painted crimson walls, he wondered if his words had been bookmarked by a system monitoring any significant sounds.

Alec reluctantly opened his closet.

There were shoes in there but only one pair that appeared suited for outdoor use. He’d seen ads for them on television but he’d never worn sneakers like them himself. From years in an institution where money was frequently no object, Manticore had typically supplied their soldiers with the adequately generic. He weighed their light polymer design and tried not to notice that they had been chosen in shades that went with most of his clothing. He appreciated how the soft treads of the soles made him as silent as if he’d been walking in bare feet. The temperature out in the corridor was much lower than his room. The lone narrow window at the hall’s end lent little light to the chilled humid air.

Alec stopped in front of Daniel’s door.

Even though they’d only shared a sandwich and an hour of conversation, he felt a reluctant sense of trust forming for the guy. He had quickly discovered the methods required for two way communication the night before when they had been alone in the kitchen. Hands on hands had allowed for a full hour of dialogue, each answer spelled out into Alec’s palms and gestured carefully in the dark. At the end of it all, Alec was left with a lot more questions than he'd had in the first place. At first he thought the other transgenic’s vague responses were purposefully slow and cryptic. He’d had no reason to believe this X5’s loyalties lay anywhere but with the woman that had incarcerated them both. However, it took him a while before he realized that Daniel wasn’t being willingly uncooperative or secretive.

He was just the quiet type.

When Alec really sat back and studied the open curiosity on his clone’s face he felt like he really was looking into a mirror. Not a mirror that shared the identical width and set of their eyes or the play of muscles that arranged their emotions, but a mirror of innocent compliance that had been vigilantly fostered in the shelter of a comfortable prison. Alec too had once found Manticore’s choke chain to be reassuring, its brutally restrictive nature incidental in the face of his allegiance. There was a numb calm to be found when all your choices were stripped away, leaving only the requirement of your obedience.

Daniel’s hands had told him that the doctor was only dangerous if you broke her rules. He told Alec that life here was a good one if you did as you were told and didn’t ask about things that didn’t concern you. It was surely a better deal than anything to be found amongst the rabid chaos that reigned on the outside. They were safely conserved behind Dr. Gaboriault’s modern day moats. Their kind were protected from every scientific ignoramus that would do nothing but mindlessly exploit priceless advances of biotechnology such as themselves.

Alec shook his head.

Just like a damn mirror.

It was a strange revelation to discover the nuances of personality in the midst of silence when Alec had greatly depended on language to gauge another’s intentions. He hadn’t learned much in their conversation that he hadn’t already figured out on his own. Daniel had lived with the doctor his entire life. She had educated him and the others herself and allowed them to pursue any interests they wanted. Daniel’s hands had gone still when Alec asked if he ever got to step past the estate’s borders. He had taken his hands away completely when Alec had asked about the house security system.

After that Daniel had withdrawn and vanished into his room for the night.

Alec had left him alone for about 12 hours and this wasn’t a party, but he needed to break some ice.

He’d hoped Daniel’s door would be wide open so he wouldn’t have to figure out the logistics of getting the X5’s attention. However, Alec had stopped asking permission to open closed doors a long time ago and he really couldn’t think of a better reason for not bothering to knock.

The pitch blackness gave him pause.

It made sense not to provide Daniel with any cosmetic lighting. The lampshades and varied wattage of Alec’s enclosure were installed to satisfy a basic need for pleasing ambiance. This room hadn’t been equipped with anything like that at all. Alec turned instinctively towards the scents and sounds his diverted senses detected in the dark. There was no window but vents had been installed for the flow of fresh air. The metallic smell of rainwater mixed with the acrid wood smoke of the small fire sputtering warmly in the corner. It reminded Alec of the room he’d first met Daniel in somewhere on the first floor of the house. It appeared the X5 enjoyed fires. Or at least the smell and feel of them. Alec’s eyes settled into the best image quality they would receive. His retinas gathered up all the ambient radiance available to provide the dim outlines of furniture, a bed and the transgenic himself seated opposite the room at a table. He was looking up in Alec’s direction, his expression lost in shadow but the scent of his presence as solid as a handshake.

Alec half smiled at the small glimpse into Daniel’s perspective.

The space was approximately identical to Alec’s other than his book shelves were completely filled with the thick bulky text of Braille. Alec recalled he had first seen the transgenic with one of the telephone book sized things when he’d met him by the fireplace. The gray fabrics that covered the bed and chairs were all elements of the same invoked sensation. Everything, along with the glow of the fire was calming and cool to the touch. Alec stood undecidedly behind a sofa and felt its material. Its color was a weird institutional shade of beige but it had been made from a soft fleece. All the furniture in the room appeared to have been upholstered with the same intention.

Touch.

He thought the mismatched palette suited the X5 perfectly whether he could see it or not. Shifting in place, Alec glanced up at the ceiling and imagined the floor that Gabriel had staked claim for his own territory. He would place a couple safe bets that there was nothing soothing or relaxed to be found up there. Gabriel did seem to be correct on this transgenic’s favorite past time however. Daniel was seated at his table with several books laid out across its surface.

Alec walked forward and knew his footsteps across the floor would be the equivalent of a greeting.

Any worry that his gait might be mistaken for another built exactly like him vanished when Daniel raised a hand to acknowledge Alec by name. Comfortable with the knowledge that Daniel was very aware of his presence, he pulled the X5’s hands onto his forearms so they could talk.

Alec signed. “You busy?”

To Alec's delight, the answer was the one he was looking for.

“Good.” Alec grinned. “I love taking walks. Too bad we don't have a beach.”

Alec had a powerful urge to breathe in clean crisp air that only nature could provide. From his room alone he’d counted at least fifty filtration towers that loomed along the perimeter like mutant trees. The purification machines did a small amount to keep the city’s cloud of pollution away from the private estate but they did a great job at cutting down the mixed reek of gasoline fumes and landfill. Nonetheless, the reality of the armory waiting for a target to vaporize was a heavy weight on his mind. Every fantasy of how to slip his chains always ended unsuccessfully in the sights of an automated machine gun.

“You sure we won’t set off any of the fireworks?”

Daniel shrugged off the concern with the promise of a quick pick up game of basketball and a hike that could apparently score you a view of the ocean. Alec wasn’t quite sure what the blind X5 did with views but he supposed he didn’t really know what to do with them either. Anyway, Alec wasn’t interested in the stone paths that lead through the flower beds and automated artillery. He was much more interested by the closest structure to the house that had a well used walkway and easy access to the main driveway.

He could see it perfectly from his room’s window.

All night long he’d looked up from his exams to study the frail glass panes that made its walls. The plants cultivated inside weren’t trimmed and groomed perfectly like everything else on the grounds. The vegetation in the green house’s interior was wild and rampant, grown up over its sides and roof as if it had been left unchecked for years. No gardeners were allowed across that threshold. No timely maintenance was performed to keep its appearance up like everything else around it. The very sign of its neglect was an indicator that the doctor frequented the building often.

All through the night Alec had watched electric lights glow softly through the cracks in the dense foliage. They had not clicked off with the dawn like anything else would when attached to a timer. That was another thing that kept him thinking as the sun slowly rose behind the clouds.

They were the only other working lights he’d seen since he’d arrived.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It didn’t seem like much but Alec knew rebellion when he saw it.

A different staircase followed a brand new set of hallways and he knew he was being led to a forbidden place. If he had any doubts about the apparent clandestine movements of his clone, the appearance of a security touch pad got rid of those real quick. Alec watched the code be punched in and memorized the sequence. It wouldn’t do him any good but he burned it into his brain anyway. All decent defense systems had a rotating set of passwords but if he caught a few of them he might figure out the master pattern. If he got more than a few he might even eventually work out how to disarm a couple of the guns sitting outside.

Keeping close to Daniel, he only hung back when the scent of rubbing alcohol and antiseptic hit him. Alec knew that array of smells anywhere.

They were in the infirmary.

“Wait.” Alec caught Daniel by the arm. “What about Gaboriault?”

_Not home._

Alec didn’t know what exactly that meant but before he could ask for elaboration Daniel was already continuing on his way.

The room hadn’t always served in a medical capacity. The tall windows along the wall reminded Alec of those paintings of turn of the century parlors. It should have been filled with pale pink satin chairs and polished tables for silver tea pots. With no use for the convenient space’s entertainment potential, it had been instead converted into a private and excellently equipped medical ward. From the lighting attached to the arched ceilings, the place could have been lit up brighter than a football stadium if need be. It was dim now however. Only a few halogen lights were on in an adjacent lab, separated by a glass wall. The wood floors had been replaced by hygienic tile and the sparse furniture that passed as the house’s décor was missing. The lamps were pure function and the baseboards replaced with sterile ceramic. The only thing that looked out of place was the old wallpaper and the crystal chandelier that had been left behind. The faded flowers on the walls were washed out and the peeling seams yellowed with aged paste. The antique paper appeared a tad surreal against the state of the art hospital beds outfitted to monitor the patient as proficiently as a full staff of nurses.

The X5 named Michael lay sleeping in one of them.

A large and comfortable leather chair was positioned near the bed. Alec noted a stitched quilt left unfolded across its seat. So that was where the doctor had spent the last few days. His gaze flickered over the lab with its clutter of papers, computer monitors, and random coffee mugs.

“Looks like your friend is alive.” Alec said. “Kind of.”

The sick transgenic was in a partitioned bed in a row of three. A steady audio bleep was dutifully registering the stream of vitals. They were all on the low side but the guy seemed to exist permanently on the line as it was.

Daniel found the bed and began touching the body under the blanket. Alec realized he was checking the other X5’s pulse.

“You don’t get any visiting hours huh?” Alec guessed. “Should have told me where we were headed. Could have brought flowers.”

He suddenly realized he was talking to himself again but this time with Daniel as company. He kind of liked the excuse for speaking even if the other party had no idea he was doing it. Besides, Daniel picked up on his efforts of communication in one way or another even if he wasn’t gathering the precise meaning. The sleeping transgenic wasn’t roused by Daniel’s touch or Alec’s voice. The disturbing gray cast to his skin and the peeling wallpaper made Alec want to leave.

Alec glanced at the monitor and considered the fact that Daniel couldn’t read it.

“Here. Come here.” Alec took Daniel’s hands off Michael’s motionless face and started signing numbers. Diastolic and systolic pressure. Heart rate and temperature. “See? He’s fine. Can we go now?”

Daniel seemed satisfied with the information and even gave Alec a small smile.

Alec’s attention was caught by a pair of double doors that led out onto the building’s back veranda. Perfectly enough, the oblong rectangular structure of the green house was sitting right there behind a small grove of trees. The distance between the building and the infirmary was less than a walk of a dozen yards. Its proximity to an area in which the doctor assuredly spent a lot of her time doubled his growing conviction that that was where he needed to go.

“While we’re breakin’ the rules and everything.”

Daniel cocked his head as if he could sense there was something on his clone’s mind. Alec took a deep breath and picked up Daniel’s hands again.

“So, how about giving me the full tour?” He wasn’t sure if you could sign in a casual tone but he tried his hardest. From Daniel’s drawn expression Alec figured his anxious scent alone pretty much gave away anything he had hoped to conceal. “What is that outside?”

Daniel paused, his inflection wary and hesitant.

_Conservatory._

“We allowed in there?”

_No._

That big negative came pretty quick and without any deliberation at all.

“I bet you know how to get in there tho.” Alec muttered as he watched the green house lights glitter through the lazy thrash of the trees in the rain.

_It’s off limits._

“Not if you turn off the cameras.” Alec turned the X5 towards him, pulling him close so every sign could be plainly read. “Can you do it? Can you turn them off?”

_We’ll get in troub—_

“Can’t get caught if you don’t get caught?” Alec put both of Daniel’s hands on his face so he could feel him smiling. He was fairly certain the sight of it evoked confidence but it had never occurred to him what his best reassuring smile felt like. “What do ya say?”

Daniel’s brow furrowed in consideration. Alec could feel the clone’s heart beating fast as his hands kneaded Alec’s sleeves in indecision. He recognized all of Daniel’s well ingrained dread from his own years spent in confinement. The child like fear of punishment and the faithful obedience to every law until a head was turned. Alec could see that this guy broke plenty of rules around this place when he knew he could get away with it. He’d probably been doing it for a real long time too. Alec looked on anxiously as the other transgenic weighed the possibilities.

_We have to be fast._

“Sure!” Alec clapped him hard on the shoulder. “I can do fast.”

A touch pad Alec hadn’t been aware of slid out from hiding on the side of a light switch. It glowed purple and blue in the dark and Daniel keyed in the password that would grant them access to the prohibited area outside.

The frigid air washed over him and sent an inadvertent shiver down his spine. The sopping wet plants that hung heavy over the path soaked his pant legs and the drizzle quickly drenched his shirt. He wondered for a second if Daniel knew enough about the length of the doctor’s absence to allow them to take care of the physical evidence of their activities. The aroma of churned earth and damp fertilizer flooded his senses as soon as they got closer. The rain splattered nosily on the glass panels, the rusty metal frame work sorely needing a fresh coat of white paint.

“When I first met you I have to admit, I didn’t think you would ever be able to cut it out in the real world.” Alec wasn’t sure why he was thinking his thoughts out loud. It felt better to talk out here on the cold stone terrace while the auto-artillery hummed and circled in their direction. “But now I think if you got out of here you would be just fine. Not great but you know, fine?”

The outer door was difficult to shove open but it wasn’t locked.

It was only after they had passed through a curtain of ivy that the structure’s true purpose become apparent. Right there on the dirt covered planks was a shiny chrome bank of an elevator and a small panel next to it. Alec was hoping for any kind of means to contact the outside world. One of those old fashioned crappy land line telephones would work for him. Maybe get a message to Logan or Max. If they hadn’t already sold his things and threw a party for his final and hopefully permanent disappearance anyway. He grit his teeth and decided he had other contacts to reach out to for help if need be. He had money left over and he was good for a lot more.

Where ever that elevator went, it would bring him closer to a technological means to fire a proverbial flare for help. He only hoped there was anyone out there actually looking for it.

Daniel immediately busied himself with the hundred odd buttons that ran unmarked on the console. Alec watched him for a moment before he understood it was going to take a minute or three to get the job done.

He cleared his throat.

“Like I was saying, I think you should really give the real world a shot.” Alec leaned against the wall and watched the overhead cameras go dead one by one. “But truth be told pal, not many of us guys are doing so hot out there even with what we got. I almost got run over by a taxi the other day and I don’t even need glasses and I think guys like you don’t get enough credit because I’m always hearing that the city sewer works department is looking for people to work nights and hey! Have you ever ridden a bike—”

_What?_

Alec was suddenly sheepishly aware that Daniel had been becoming slightly exasperated with the continuously unshared monologuing.

“You on the outside.” Alec repeated with his hands. “You’d just need some sunglasses and a stick.”

_A stick?_

“Yeah.” Alec shrugged. “You have to look a little helpless or you’ll just freak everyone the hell out.”

When the door heavily disengaged like an air lock, the gush of stale recycled air from below smelled like everything he kept expecting this place to be. Heavily oxygenated, sharp with industrial cleansers and barely covering the linger of chemicals beneath. Down at the bottom of that elevator shaft was where Alec would discover everything he’d found the Gaboriault Manor lacking. The stark white cinderblock walls. The stainless steel tables with restraints. The centrifuges of blood being slowly sorted and frozen for analysis. He had a feeling he wouldn’t find many discrepancies between the doctor's setup and the government laboratories of his formative years.

It would be like catching a nostalgic glimpse of home sweet home.

“So?” Alec braced himself. “W-What’s she got going on down there?”

Daniel simply held up two sets of numbers.

490  
491

“Right.” Alec said as the doors ground open. “Them.”

The doctor might have been a total head case but there was no denying that she was a very intelligent woman. If she was keeping a couple of her angels down in a meticulously locked basement she probably had a pretty good reason. Alec watched the doors seal closed behind them.

Daniel had suggested they be fast.

If Alec had a middle name, that'd be it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was ultimately decided that Max would not be attending the charity function.

At least not at Logan’s side.

After a few hours of sleep had allowed time for more conscientious thought, the idea of bringing another known X5 rogue within sight of a woman who knew of their existence looked more and more like a horrible plan. Max wanted to argue but the there wasn’t much of a case over the plain and simple fact that in certain circles her face and DNA were legend. Logan insisted on her presence regardless however, and quickly found a way for her to attend in a much less visible capacity. He had no idea how authentically Max could serve wine to waiting tables but he trusted her to blend in as well as she could. The simple black and white uniform was a lot less complicated than the beaded gown and severe high heels that matched.

Her relief at her edited role had been palpable.

The event was a well publicized auction that attracted the most affluent people from all over the world. The guise was private donations towards the advance of communicable disease on the continent but the real draw was all the items that ended up on the auction block. Ever since the Pulse, money had become a fleeting commodity to various well off families that had never been without it. The personal assortment of art and sculpture tended to be the first things to go when times got tight. Entire collections that hadn’t been out of private ownership for decades usually showed up here with an outrageous price tag. The street in front of the host hotel was jammed with honking stretch limousines and yelling sector cops. Logan might have paid like everyone else but he wasn’t who the reporters were here to see. Getting inside had taken an hour of waiting on line and an arduous delay at the metal detectors.

Logan patted his wheels. They were a great method of getting in contraband through professional security. No one wanted to frisk a guy in a wheelchair. They certainly didn’t want to take him out of it so they could dismantle it either. He touched the small device hidden in his ear, and listened to the party noise echoing off the vaulted golden ballroom ceilings. He hadn’t heard anything from Max besides a few short curt replies to her boss when her voice activated the microphone. From the sound of it, she wasn’t enjoying her brief new career in catering.

Everyone turned as a waiter with a tray filled with a thousand dollars worth of champagne loudly dropped it and himself all over the floor.

For a bowtie affair the atmosphere reminded Logan vaguely of Crash during the hectic hours before last call. Several types of music were playing on opposite sides of the room, broken bass lulls of jazz crossing over the low pitched waver of an opera star by a piano. All the famous faces flitting through the noise belonged to the political, the Hollywood and the platinum record sales. Regardless if public life required a voting majority or lucrative fan worship, all the figureheads had in common were an equal hunger to have some reckless fun on their considerable dime. Logan glanced up at the gigantic rotating video image of the charity and all its sponsored company logos. Several of the symposium walls had been replaced with massive plasma screens that fizzled in and out with auction items and the rapidly shifting auction boards. The crowd erupted with applause to the flashing big names and mock sirens blaring in warning as the bidders went to war percentile by colossal percentile.

“Drink up, honey, “ Cindy handed him a fluted crystal glass. “It’s the good stuff.”

Max’s replacement on the other hand was making a much better date than Logan had ever anticipated.

“Logan Cale!”

A well known judge with his smiling wife emerged from the throng.

“Nice to see you out!” The man looked uncomfortably at Logan’s wheelchair. “You sure are looking real well.”

Logan didn’t miss the man’s gaze flicker and linger on Cindy. It wasn’t a simple task to ignore how the woman filled out a dress, even a borrowed one, and the way she wore it convinced even Logan that she stood around sipping Cristal at $10,000 a plate dinners every night of the week.

The small talk continued as one roaming couple after another found Logan in the crowd. Those that had trouble remembering him, invariably remembered his chair. The ones that didn’t remember his chair tried to avoid his gaze when they accidentally caught it. The forced smiles and questions hovered over their discomfort with his injury. It was a little funny that he barely even thought about it until he was face to face with a lot of belt buckles and sequined elbow purses.

“There’s our girl.” Cindy murmured into her drink.

Logan thought she had spotted Max in the crowd of wait staff bustling through the party trying to keep the alcohol flowing. Logan’s inspection of the ballroom stopped on one harried waitress after another but he didn’t see the transgenic. It was when the crowd briefly parted that he saw who Cindy was referring to. Logan had shown her the only photograph to be found in the national database. It was from an employee ID card when the doctor had been working with the Stanford University’s research labs. The picture had been old but Cindy had caught her anyway.

Logan resisted the urge to touch the mic at his ear.

“Main ballroom.” He knew Max would hear him loud and clear. “By the east, south wall corner, black dress.”

Logan studied the woman nervously.

“Cindy, can you—”

“I’ll go pretend I’m interested in buyin’ that Rodin.” Cindy suggested. “I’ll even ask her if she thinks it’ll match my eyes.”

He watched Cindy melt into the crowd and head to the other side of the room.

The doctor didn’t look very different from the snapshot besides having a small fortune in jewelry and a shimmering black gown on. She was ascetically pleasing, her face and portions attractive and photogenic. In fact she looked like every other wealthy woman that was walking around in this room with the impatient anticipation of laying down a slice of a ridiculously hefty hedge fund in the name of a charitable trust.

Logan anxiously checked the people surrounding her. He spoke loud enough to activate the mic again.

“She’s alone.”

As soon as Logan said it, he saw he was wrong.

“M-Max?”

“I’m headed that way Logan.”

“I see him.”

“Say again?”

Logan watched the recognizable form of a male transgenic move easily to the doctor’s side. After a cursory scan around their immediate area, the X5 handed Elaine Gaboriault a glass of red wine. Logan blinked as they both turned to admire the renowned statues on display. Logan watched the vigilant scan of the crowd happen again. He knew what the maneuver was because he saw Max do it all the time. It was a function of an alert and ready body guard.

“Alec.” Logan said numbly. “H-He’s here.”

“Stand by, your signal is breaking…”

Alec went suddenly out of his line of sight. Frantic, Logan repositioned himself searching for the X5’s profile out of the countless identical black suits and white shirts. He could see Cindy now in place and met her eyes through the crowd. By her brief shrug he knew she hadn’t seen him. Cursing the fact that they had only been only able to smuggle in radios for himself and Max, his breath caught in his throat when Alec remerged from the masses. Not even ten feet away, he turned sharply down a hallway sitting half hidden between two large flower arrangements.

“He’s moving.”

“Logan! Wait for me!”

Logan pushed through the people congregated around him and ignored the sharp complaints of his wheels on the unwary with open toed shoes. He searched the entrance to the small corridor that lead away from the music and the dull roar of conversation. As soon as he left polished stone for carpet the lamp light grew warm and gold. A few men brushed past him back towards the party and he abruptly realized he was in the entry foyer of a small recessed bar. Besides the rattle of martinis being made and the thick pungent scent of Cuban cigars, there was nothing else back there. Seeing no one he knew at the bar stools, Logan felt a rush of relief when he spotted a continuation of the hallway beyond the leather sofas and polished standing ashtrays. Hurriedly turning past the arch of potted ferns, he froze in place.

The red carpet floors became a checkerboard of white and burgundy tiles. With a dazed blink he realized he’d followed Alec into the men’s restroom. Besides the transgenic, he was the only other person in there. The long row of stalls were neatly shut by an unseen attendant, and the granite counter of sink tops was sparkling clean. The echoing trickle of the running sink snapped off when Alec removed his hands from under its motion sensor.

The transgenic returned his stare.

Logan frowned uncertainly.

There was pale shiny scar tissue slashed across Alec’s cheekbones where there shouldn't have been any. Although the tuxedo had a high white starched collar, Logan could see the pink edge of another scar that ended under his chin. The careless hang of Alec’s hair had been cut short, the length making it a few shades darker than Logan was used to seeing. The body’s fluid movements were the same but subtly different. There was a hitch in the flow, a stiff awkwardness Logan had never seen in Alec’s self-assured physicality. However, despite all that, it was the unhinged look in his eyes that made Logan slowly back away until his wheels bumped into the wall.

There was a frenzied hysteria lying right behind the calm set of the bright liquid green pupils that Logan had never seen before. Not even in the pained delirium during the weeks after they’d taken him away from Ames White.

“Alec?” Logan cautiously asked.

The sound of the name stilled the transgenic. There was a strange moment before the open hostility on the familiar features suddenly evaporated. The dark expression was sinuously replaced with an easy smile Logan knew extremely well. Glancing back over his shoulder towards the meager safety of the occupied bar, he knew the recognizably affable gesture was still more menacing than he would have liked.

“Now this is interesting.” Alec sighed as he leaned back against the sinks and thoughtfully crossed his arms. “One might even say a mighty strange coincidence.”

The voice traveled through the muscles that housed his vocal cords but another man’s intonations and modulation were being produced. All the expected sarcasm that fell from the his lips had been delicately shifted away from its normal harmless sting and cut down deep into something else entirely.

“It doesn’t look good does it?” The transgenic asked. “The odds of a random stranger following me into this very room and then calling me by that particular name? I wouldn’t play those odds. Not in one million years.”

Logan’s skin flashed with a sickening wash of cold sweat.

He had made a mistake.

An extremely stupid and terrible mistake. He hoped to god that his reduced and stuttering voice was loud enough for Max to pick up on her radio.

“W-Who are you?”

With a blur, the man at the sink was suddenly over his chair. His hands gripped the wheels hard, making the scars into neat X marks over each of his white knuckles. Logan didn’t move when his glasses were tugged off. The transgenic examined them before dropping them to clatter on the tiles as he crouched down and leaned in close. Logan swallowed when he saw the neat even slices of scar tissue decorating the soft flesh of the X5’s eyelids.

“I’m not Alec,” he guaranteed him softly. “But I have an even better question.”

Logan watched the lunacy in the burning gaze seep down into the wide unfriendly grin. The transgenic’s voice lowered as gentle fingers painfully tipped up Logan’s chin.

“Who the hell are you?”

 

tbc


	9. Chapter 9

Alec had no misconceptions about the risks of being caught.

Despite Daniel’s admirable self-assurance, the amount of concealed hardware the doctor had invested in her infrastructure was extensive. The daunting task of moving through the layers of security undetected would have made even a finely tuned X5 fresh out of training break into a cold sweat.

When the elevator doors opened again Alec felt all of his sparking nervousness fade with the acceptance that their actions would be inevitably discovered. Regardless of any attributes Elaine Gaboriault had picked up from her former employers, Alec didn’t see any sign amongst the resident transgenics that any reprimand doled out would be anything he couldn’t handle. Alec had been raised with the merciless and brutal eradication of his contemporaries on a daily basis. There was no word in any language he knew that could summarize the constant state he’d had to function and operate in while in the keeping of his former handlers. It was beyond terror or fear. It was a numb submission to remain kneeling beneath an axe that could fall at any moment. When it did the best to be hoped for was a swift clean cut.

If a stern lecture and a few missed meals was the downside of getting his hands on a working modem, he’d take that and more with a smile on his face. He realized he was smiling already with the thought of all that unsupervised technology just one more encoded script away. He looked at Daniel again and felt his smile falter as a wave of guilt threatened his high spirits.

The doctor had told him Daniel’s age but it hadn’t really registered until that moment for some reason. Being a whole two years older abruptly felt massively significant. Maybe it was Daniel’s own grin mixed up with the rush of breaking the law. It could have been the sheer exhilaration on the X5s face when Alec hacked the problematic door that had met them on the bottom floor. He wondered if this was what all those strange afternoon television dramas about peer pressure were all about. They wouldn’t be down here in the doctor’s sacred underground if Alec hadn’t insisted. It hadn’t occurred to him that the other transgenic might be bending the rules in order to impress or please him.

For whatever reason, Daniel hadn’t looked like a 19 year old kid until now.

The preset ceiling lights flickered on tube by tube when they stepped through the doorway. The professional in him immediately appraised the planning that had gone into the place. Unlike the infirmary that had been converted out of the house’s unused spaces, this laboratory had been created with a precise design in mind. Alec wasn’t positive how many hundreds of feet of rock and dirt were above their heads but a ten second elevator ride could go as deep as you were willing to dig. It was a perfect place to hide all of your really big mistakes. Alec just hoped they didn’t mind unexpected company.

“Hello?” It seemed polite to announce themselves. Daniel shifted next to him as his voice echoed back. “Anyone home?”

As soon as he’d stepped into the stale recycled air he’d known there was no one around. The place wasn’t set like any kind of living space. There was barely room between the tables to walk around without difficulty let alone reside. Bookshelves crammed full with manuals and reference material were objects that spoke of only labor and not habitation. There was no sign of bedding or quarters. A small bathroom didn’t even have a mirror over the small steel sink. He turned the corner cautiously, seeing what was left of the cramped area.

The bright lights hummed overhead and dozens of computer cooling fans whirred. The glossy tiles were spotless but the insulated walls were covered in papers and charts. One divider clear of equipment was plastered with printed maps of segmented sections of the nervous system and digital geometry depicting three-dimensional images of the brain. A cluttered white marker board was covered in chemistry sequences and the hasty slashes of mathematics. For all the doctor’s money she seemed to have stayed true to the good old fashion method of pencil to paper in regards to her work.

Dozens of blank screens on various tables simultaneously booted up as the lab’s automated systems completed their programmed checklists.

“Now we’re talkin’.” Alec murmured.

He noted the difference in stance when the blind transgenic wasn’t completely familiar with his surroundings. However, rote memorization of layout seemed to be a talent he and his clone shared because after a few seconds Daniel tentatively moved for the nearest computer embankment. Alec was right beside him.

What he saw made him want to punch in the festively colored cross sections of cerebellum hanging on the wall.

“Aw no,” Alec moaned. “She passworded these too? It’s as if she’s living around a bunch of pain in the ass transgenics.”

Daniel’s fingers lingered over a keyboard before moving on. There was no handy braille typeface down here. There was also no way to read the smooth monitors either. The transgenic found another oblong shape of a wall console that interested him more.

“Looks like you’ve been reading more than Huckleberry Finn up there huh?”

Alec turned his attention towards the lab’s interior.

Besides an open storage room with the warm static scent of more computer servers, there was the recognizable refrigerator door of an adjacent cold room. Glancing back at Daniel typing determinedly on the terminal, Alec decided to give the freezer a quick look. The large heavy door gave easily when he experimentally pulled on the latch. The motion lights clicked on with his entry and illuminated the long narrow area. The sudden searing bite of deep freeze made his rain damp clothes turn painful on his skin. A look at the digital thermometer read an exact -10 degrees Celsius. Alec counted eight freezer cabinets and read the numbers over each one.

The vapor of his breath clouded in front of his face as his heart began to pound.

 

331845739-490  
331845739-491  
331845739-492  
331845739-493  
331845739-494  
331845739-495  
331845739-496  
331845739-497  
331845739-498

 

Although the doctor had dismissed the use of designations, every hatch was clearly marked by a series of numbers that identified all the transgenics under her roof and a few more that weren’t. He walked to the one marked 496. It was Daniel’s barcode. The compartment’s contents rattled as Alec used some force to pull the hatch free of its seal of ice. It was packed with bottles, vials and bags of the X5’s biological samples.

He moved down the row to the places marked for the immune deficient 497 and the unstable 495. The transgenics of the doctor’s collection were aptly represented with three lifetimes worth of testing. Each compartment revealed a wall filled from top to bottom with enough genetic material to assemble each unique X5-49 from scratch. Yanking open the door that had his serialization over it, he wasn’t surprised to find a much smaller assortment of samples that were all labeled over ten years old. Slipping a test tube filled with erythrocytes back into its metal holder, he surmised that Elaine Gaboriault must have left Manticore’s employ around the same month and year as his sample dates mysteriously cut off. In the compartment next to his was an even smaller supply that belonged to X5-493. Alec’s gaze lingered on the numbers before he let the door swing shut with a hiss back into place. Recounting the metal doors, he realized Gaboriault had never integrated him in her proud collection of five. Including himself and Ben, four of the designations weren’t accounted for. Looking into the cabinets of the X5-49s that Daniel had not mentioned, he found another rack of samples that were as limited as his own. It looked like X5-492 and X5-498 had never been a part of the doctor’s personal inventory.

Reading the labels of their last samples he saw with some mixed relief that the dates matched his own. That meant they had either burned with Manticore or got out like he had. The fact that their fate was completely unknown made Alec glad. Whether they flared and fizzled in the real world like Ben or if they had never even made it that far, he was happy to know they weren’t here wandering the pitch black of Gaboriault’s walls.

Alec paused and considered the remaining doors through the thick fog of his breath. Daniel had specifically stated that there were two more transgenics down here and Alec had the feeling that he didn’t mean just a couple vials of their blood.

He looked apprehensively at the next hatch.

490

He was confused when he found the shelves inside were empty. Unlike the others crammed with beakers and tubes, the compartment only had one container sitting on the bottom rack. Alec slid it out and curiously hefted its slight weight. It took him a moment to comprehend what was wrapped in insulating foil within the plastic box.

An aged yellowed label was fastened neatly on its side:

Gestation failure at 22 weeks- removal 12/1/96

Alec whistled. The doctor hadn’t ever declared that physical condition was a factor in her ownership. With a shaking hand he wiped off a layer of ice crystals from the plastic and turned it over to look for any more tagging. There was no more documentation explaining why the very first X5-49 had failed before even drawing its first breath. Quickly placing the container back where he’d found it he wiped his wet hands off on his thighs. Alec looked reluctantly at the last freezer on the row that he hadn’t opened.

491

He frowned when he found that the compartment appeared to be as well stocked as all the others. It seemed like all the X5-49s that had spent time walking the planet had been well documented by the doctor. If this one had been alive long enough to stack a storage freezer with bio samples then where was he now? Alec’s frown grew as he thought of how the woman had explicitly stated her ownership. He glanced at the cabinet with the remains of the doomed 490. If the lady said she had them, Alec was going to believe it.

The tight space of the freezer lead back and ended with another sealed annex. Upon wrenching it open from its frame, he found a remarkably warmer hallway with a single bulb hanging from a short cord from the low ceiling. Feeling like he had stepped into the stifling confines of a closet, he studied the opposite wall.

It was secured with a massive wheel vault lock. The vault itself looked like it had been constructed with a few feet of barrier between the lab’s structure and the freezer walls. There was a paper folder glittering with frost on the wall beside a lock mechanism that Alec would have been hard pressed to pick even if he was prepped for its existence. The numerals that described the specimen in the elaborate cage were the numbers Alec had been expecting to see. What he had momentarily forgotten was the doctor’s partiality for biblical names to title her test subjects.

 

331845739-491: Lucien

 

The fallen angel.

A sudden grip on his elbow caused him to make an embarrassing high pitched sound.

Adrenaline flooding his veins, Alec had to rein back a fist before he accidentally sent it crashing into Daniel’s face.

_The computer is online._

Alec took a moment or two before his thoughts assembled the hand signs into something significant. Daniel had gotten past the passwords. That meant Alec could try to get a message out. His haste to do just that was interrupted when he remembered where he was.

“W-Wait,” Alec stared at the hefty bolt and noted no other cabinet in the deep freeze had locks. “Why is his body in there?”

Daniel tilted his head in confusion.

Alec banged on the icy metal with his fist for an explanatory aid.

“In there,” he repeated in sign. “No one else’s samples are locked up. Why only 491?”

_He’s not dead._

Alec blinked at Daniel. It took a few moments for the shock to wear off so he could form the words ringing in his skull.

“How does it open, how do we—“

Daniel awkwardly grabbed his arm, his strength staying Alec from moving any closer towards the door. The transgenic's pale eyes were searching Alec in alarmed agitation.

“What? What’s wrong?”

_Lucien doesn’t come out of his room._

Alec winced at the force of Daniel digging the words into the palms of his hands, the sound of his breathing audible above the drone of freezer motors.

“Why not?”

_He’s crazy._

Alec studied the door in stunned bewilderment.

“What do you mean?” he signed into the transgenic’s cold hands. “Like Gabriel?”

 _No._ Daniel replied worriedly. _Not like Gabriel._

Alec’s shocked gaze fell back on the frozen stiff papers hanging on a hook. Pushing it aside he found the half hidden square of a diagnostic monitor. He realized the steady jump of the rolling line was measuring a heartbeat on the other side of the wall. The timestamp indicated that it had started to pick up approximately since Alec had entered into the vicinity. It was spiking with ragged succession into the top of the screen and dropping back down in a firm rapid cadence.

He stepped backwards.

With the kind of danger the doctor felt comfortable roaming around freely in her home he swiftly understood what quality of lethal may lay behind the considerable precautions. If there was another grade of psychosis that the doctor believed should be suppressed, he decided that the rest of the heartfelt family reunion was unnecessary. He needed to get the fuck out of here. All he wanted to do was leave this madness and the woman in charge of it as far behind him as he could.

“T-The modem?” Alec stuttered. “How long will it—“

_You’ve got 1 minute, 23 seconds on the satellite link._

Alec uneasily found his grin again.

“All I’ll need.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The evening hadn’t gone exactly as Logan had planned.

By the time they had cleared the third sector check point he’d finally allowed himself to start breathing again. Getting through the elevators and to the penthouse unnoticed was another small miracle unto itself. He never imagined that they’d get as far as his living room with no problem other than sending Cindy back out into the foyer to wipe up any drops of blood left behind. He also didn’t think this night would end with yet another transgenic tied up in his bathroom. It was a good thing he’d kept the handcuffs from Alec’s stint in recovery. He’d had a weird feeling he would be putting them to good use again sooner rather than later.

“Don’t get near him,” Max warned Cindy. “He might bite.”

Logan rubbed at his forehead and considered how his existence hadn’t come to a painful end in a men’s restroom only an hour before. Although his life hadn’t flashed before his eyes he thought with a deep down certainty that the squeeze of the powerful grip around his throat would close the curtains for good.

Max’s unexpected arrival had turned everything into a blur.

Ceramic had shattered and plaster walls had cracked when the transgenics engaged with as much force as Logan had ever seen Max encounter. Pipes had broken and water hissed into a steaming spray across the ceiling. Logan could only stay out of their way and attempt to avoid any ensuing sharp debris.

Then something strange had happened.

Despite the violent counter measures of the unknown X5, the fight was over so quickly that Logan couldn’t even decide if it had even started. Before the dust had chance to settle, Max was standing over an unconscious well dressed man that looked like Alec. Her waiting uniform had been torn at the shoulder and she had a few new bruises but all in all she had looked for the most part just as baffled as Logan. Their swift exit was made possible by a convenient bathroom window and Logan’s car fitting neatly in the narrow alleyway below. The tense drive back had given everyone plenty of time to let the grim shock settle in.

Cindy was standing way back in the safety of Logan’s kitchen and hugging her arms.

“What’s your designation?” Max demanded.

The transgenic sagged back against the shower tiles and appeared revolted by the inquiry.

“‘The invisible thing called a Good Name is made up of the breath of numbers that speak well of you.’”

“Savile.” Logan said before he could stop himself. “That’s a quote from George Savile.”

“Oh yeah?” Max shifted indecisively. “Who the heck is that?“

“He’s a man who wrote books,” The transgenic answered curtly. “And my name is Gabriel.”

Max checked the manacles one more time before she took a seat on the closed toilet. She met the captured transgenic’s steady gaze lingering on her upper body and angrily got to her feet again.

“What the hell are you lookin’ at?”

“Never seen a female X before,” The transgenic said. “You smell like candy.”

The transgenic in the disheveled tuxedo couldn’t do much to avoid the strike while trapped in restraints. She dropped him back onto the floor with a swift blow to the jaw. The starched white front of his dress shirt was already bright red from a split lip and a busted nose but his smile seemed ready to accept more. Max raised her fist again.

“Hold up,” Cindy ventured closer. A healthy fear kept her at a distance, but concern was clear in her wide eyes. “T-That’s enough of that.”

“He’s not Alec.” Max growled. “He was gonna kill Logan—“

The low rumble of laughter from the transgenic's throat made her almost haul back and hit him again.

“I-I know it,” Cindy said. “Just take it easy, boo.”

Max hesitantly drew back as he groaned and shook his head clear, whipping spots of blood on the cream colored walls. Logan was privately trying not to subscribe to Cindy’s misplaced sentiments. Max had seen her share of Manticore copies in her lifetime. Her emotions would not be swayed by the sight of another one. A face to her could be nothing more than a face.

Even if Logan understood that this man was not the person he knew, it was difficult to believe anything but his eyes. This X5 might have appeared to suffer like Alec but his strange seething calm certainly bore no parallel to X5-494. Logan studied the multitude of precisely made lacerations that patterned the man’s flesh. He wondered if Gaboriault just wasn’t very careful with her bodyguards or if the scarring wasn’t due to something else entirely. Knowing the transgenic talent for regeneration, he knew those wounds had to be inflicted over and over again to leave marks for any extended amount of time. Logan felt faintly sick when he realized that what he was looking at might be a masochistic self expression.

“It’s weird,” Max’s fingertips gingerly touched her swollen black eye. “He fights like a girl.”

Logan considered her words.

“He’s strong sure,” Max tipped the transgenic’s battered face up to study his annoyed features. “But the guy doesn’t have any style.”

She meant ineffective, clumsy and untrained. Logan was still too startled to respond coherently just yet. The X5 cleared his throat to speak again. Logan expected the taunting lilt and fragile calm to continue, but the affronted rage was being replaced by an expression of someone confused and plainly scared.

“I can’t stay here,” The X5’s mood shifted as quickly and barometrically as a broken traffic light. “I have to go home.”

Logan listened to him cautiously.

“If I stay out here too long I’ll get dirty,” His eyes flashed across the clean wood floors and flinched in the direction of the unseen night time cityscape. “You can wash it off if you don’t stay too long.” He briefly struggled in the restraints and looked back in frustration towards his captors. “How long will this take?”

Logan looked at the dark bruises Max had left on the transgenic. His lowered voice, soft with bewildered mystification at his mistreatment reminded him a little too much of Alec when he was wounded and afraid. He put a halt on his brimming sympathy. There were more important things to concentrate on.

He didn’t know this stranger bleeding in his shower.

All he knew was that this transgenic had been in contact with Alec. Logan rolled his chair forward resolutely and folded his hands on his lap.

“This will only take a minute,” he promised. “When we’re done you can go anywhere you’d like.”

“I can’t be late,” The X5 was adamant. “You know how women get when you’re late.”

At the vague mention of Elaine Gaboriault, Logan saw fear resurface in the green eyes again. Trying to ignore the frantic push and pull of the man’s lucidity, he kept going.

“But first you have to tell us a few things.”

“Things?” The transgenic dragged bound hands across his mouth and streaked blood across his cheek. “Like what?”

“Like what the hell is going on in that doctor’s house.”

The X5 named Gabriel smiled a bright red smile.

“Where should I start?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

He lay in bed and tried hard to feign sleep.

Almost a full three hours had passed since he’d left Daniel down on the first floor by the kitchen. The blind transgenic had explained it was necessary to allow the cameras time to rerecord so the span they had been wandering could be replaced with undisturbed footage. He had told Alec to get in bed and stay there until dawn hit.

Although he had been repeatedly guaranteed that all the security could be reset, Alec hadn’t voiced his doubts that any efforts would be a waste of time. He rolled in his blankets and gnawed at the inside of his lip. The retaliatory strike of the disciplinary hammer was secondary in his thoughts. All he could think about was the signal he’d managed to send before the satellite connection had timed out. He already had a pretty good idea that Logan knew where he had been headed that night. Sending a location would have been a waste of connection seconds that he had precious little of. Instead he’d sent all the codes he’d memorized from Daniel’s hacks. He’d sent them out on every emissary channel he knew that were observed quietly on the endless spans of bustling internet traffic.

It would be white noise to anyone who randomly came across it.

However, it would be like a fire alarm going off in a church to Eyes Only.

He flipped over in bed again and wondered if he had laid still long enough with the correct measure of shallow breathing to replicate slumber. Daniel had instructed him to maintain it for as long as he could so the cameras could refresh with new images. He really did hope he was wrong about the tight efficiency of the surveillance. Pulling the sheets over his face, he wouldn’t mind at all if Daniel managed to clean the close circuit feeds and make their trespassing images vanish like ghosts off the system. He attempted turning the other way and kicked his legs into the heavy blankets until they were all tangled at the foot of the bed.

The silence and the waiting made him involuntarily flex his fists over and over again until his palms ached. He kept expecting to hear Daniel's returning tread and the sound of the door down the hall. He didn't know what kind of hours the blind transgenic normally kept but if he was still downstairs messing with the house computer than he was taking way too long.

As the minutes ticked by in his head he let his muted memory touch upon all his previous punishments. Manticore. Ames White. Even the moments of isolation and desperation out in the free world. Gifted with a photographic memory, he could reconstruct each incident as vividly as if it had happened yesterday. He allowed himself to recall the particularly vicious and interminable. The echo of his sustained agony was like readying himself for a punch. Whatever the doctor was going to do he would be able to tolerate it. He would live through it and emerge on the other side intact.

Intact.

Alec laughed softly down into the pillow he was gripping hard with both hands. That was a word that kept coming up a lot around here. His mind mercifully wandered away from his neatly catalogued tortures and shifted to the haze of waiting exhaustion. He wasn't sure if he had actually dozed off when he heard the faint rumble of an engine somewhere far below his window. His scattered senses refocused with the distant sound of a slamming car door.

Only minutes later he detected movement down the hall.

It took him several moments to discern the unmistakable sharp click of high heels. A strong waft of perfume met him before the door was shoved wide open, the lights all coming on with no visible command. Alec sat up warily and studied her floor length gown and elbow gloves. She smelled like cigarette smoke and the indistinct traces of countless strangers she’d brushed against. From the night he’d been installed in his quarters, he hadn’t seen her once after the conclusion of the family spoon dinner. Whatever had required her presence on the outside had a dress code. It seemed when she was not busy keeping the sickly X5-497 alive, she made the occasional emergence into society. Fairly high society at that. Her train rustled against the floor with a silk whisper as she moved. The purse clutched in her gloved hands was fashioned from sleek leather and embellished with gemstones.

Alec waited for an outburst but it did not come.

She did not speak or look at him once, the placid coldness of her face unsettling as any obscenity. The sound of her slow steps magnified in his ears until finally she found a chair and seated herself. She calmly clicked open her purse and extracted what looked like a flat etched silver case. Holding it delicately between her fingers, the insides were not filled with rolled tobacco but the soft blue light of a compact computer interface. With a tap of her fingertip a mechanical grind immediately sounded from somewhere deep in the walls. Alec watched as a metal shuttered plate began to descend over the broad window.

His gaze shifted quickly to the open door and now the only means out of the room.

“Don’t,” she held up a hand when he stood. “If you want to keep breathing."

He had been speculating broadly since that fancy dinner what the ace hidden up her sleeve might be. That business card and get well note loaded with a custom made pathogen kept popping back into his head with a regular frequency. With her knowledge of their biology she could knock them all down with some bug just as easily as carrying around a pistol filled with silver bullets. No wonder none of her pet transgenics had ever made a move on her.

“The ventilation system can release an aerosol mixture by voice command,” she said. “It is also activated by any significant decrease in my heart rate.”

When the shutter met the windowsill and locked, the room was plunged back into its perfect quiet. Alec managed to clear his throat and clear his racing mind towards a path to self preservation. Seeing the normally calm set of her eyes blazing with rage, he knew that his sentencing wasn't quite over and done with. Alec sat back down and decided he should go ahead and do what he did best.

He put on a smile and held out his hands.

“Look, I can explain everything—”

“They took him.” The doctor's face was white under the powdered pallor of her makeup, her voice low and tense. “They were looking for you and they took him.”

Bewildered, Alec watched as she rose from her chair, pacing the floor with growing apprehension.

“I underestimated your influence, Alec,” a few tendrils of her tightly coiffed hair hung loose in her eyes. “I thought you had surrounded yourself with some amateur terrorists." She almost smiled, fingers pressed to her temple. "At best a capable tier of drug dealers.”

"Come again?"

“They found me,” she wrung her thin hands. “And they took him.”

Alec gave up on what remained of his tenuous composure.

“Who took who from what?”

“Gabriel,” The doctor was trembling, her words coming faster. “He needs carefully timed medications. They won’t know when he has to sleep. They won’t take care of him—“

“Hey, hey, just uh, calm down okay?”

Alec wanted to stand up so he could return her glare properly. He wanted to remind her that to meet his eyes she had to look up. Sitting around in nothing but sweat pants made him feel stupidly vulnerable and childish. Still, he found his limbs not obeying the command to rise. There was a fury radiating off the woman in waves. The white hot scent of it sliced through her heavy perfume and the odor of her sweat. It was more than enough warning that he should stay right where he was.

“This is because of you, Alec.” The small handheld computer had remotely activated something else. "But you're going to help me get him back."

A low electric hum met Alec's ears as something else was switched on. The room erupted with cold artificial light when a long rectangle section of Alec’s wall abruptly flickered to life. What he had previously thought to be an ordinary painted piece of plaster had a large hidden plasma screen embedded in its surface. He swallowed when he realized he had been more than right about the vigilant observation. The entire place was one piece of surveillance buried under another one.

The static on the wide screen suddenly solidified into an image. Alec frowned, the gentle bluish glow of the display panel igniting the dim room as he strained to see the figure moving across it.

He felt his heart skip.

Daniel looked much like Alec had left him hours before. His jacket was now missing and so was the sweater he had worn over a thin T-shirt. His clothing was plastered to his flesh with the rain. The transgenic’s hands were out in front of him and shaking uncertainly in a way that Alec had never seen the X5 exhibit. Daniel encountered a low hanging tree branch and recoiled as if he had touched something hot. Alec watched in a dazed unease when the signal hitched as the wind gusted.

Alec swung the hardness of his gaze on her. "Wh-what's going on?"

“His spatial orientation is excellent but I drove for an hour before I let him out.” The satisfaction in her voice washed over him like a frigid wave. "I don’t think he is even aware he’s still on the property.”

Alec looked frantically back at the silent image of his clone as he stumbled on the wet uneven ground.

“You know as well as I do how easily he can withstand hypothermia,” she said. “He can stay out there for days with very little physical consequence.”

Alec thought of the confident way Daniel moved in the maze of the mansion and how unconcerned he behaved in the face of every obstacle Alec found discouraging even with full use of his senses. He remembered the quiet withdrawal Daniel had displayed when asked if he’d ever had left the grounds. This place was his entire universe. Being removed from it without warning or instruction was an inspired cruelty that Alec didn’t even think White could have equaled. Alec had wandered a few stretches of dark woods himself. Being lost and afraid wasn’t a fear exclusively granted to children.

The image of Daniel was left on behind her as the doctor folded her arms.

“Don’t be too upset, Alec,” she told him. “This isn’t all just because of you.”

“What are you talking about?” He realized his chest was heaving.

“I know Daniel likes to explore. I enjoy satisfying his inherent curiosity so he doesn’t become psychologically stagnant. However, there are some rules that I cannot make allowances for no matter how much I’d like to.”

Alec sank back in his pile of pillows. He’d been right about that at least. She knew all about the lab. So much for all their covert operations. However, it was interesting that no mention was being made about the satellite uplink. Maybe Daniel had snuck a few fast ones past the doctor after all.

“I don’t like enforcing penalties,” she sighed. “I don’t like it when I’m forced to punish.”

"Then let me go get him," he said. "Think he probably got the gist by now."

Her seething frustration was momentarily replaced by an unbidden weary amusement.

“The 49s are all so incredibly obstinate.” She passed a gloved hand over her eyes. “Every new unit I tried to diminish that attribute without reducing self sufficiency, but with every new model it only seemed to get worse.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he shrugged. “No one’s perfect.”

"Where's Gabriel?" The doctor was done with the shop talk. "Who could remove a fully able X5-49 from a crowded building without being seen?"

He considered her question while trying not to watch Daniel stumble and fall somewhere out in the estate woods.

Alec actually knew exactly who might have shown up at her party and done something like that. It was hard to take down a transgenic unless you had a few good electric cattle prods and a small contingent of armed men. All of those things were hard to do in a crowded place that didn’t like the notion of concealed weapons. But that was why the doctor had brought Gabriel with her out into the big scary world wasn’t it? An X5 was better than any weapon you could carry and it could move in the crowds unnoticed. Alec could safely guess that it was another transgenic that was the probable cause of the disappearance.

He smiled before he could help himself.

So Max and Logan were looking for him after all.

“I don’t know who did it,” he lied. “I have a lot of fans out there.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I’m telling you lady, if you want a list of people who’d love to get a piece of me, this is going to be a real long night—“

“Do they want research materials?” Her words wavered as she voiced her true fear. “Would they harm him?”

Alec glanced in flustered confusion between the image of Daniel on the screen and her genuinely stricken face.

“No.” He answered but then reconsidered the question with Max in mind. “Not unless Gab didn’t give them any choice.”

Alec almost started an indignant demand to know why Gabriel was allowed out and no one else seemed to be. He bit down on his tongue and figured the doctor probably had favorites just like anyone did with a cherished and well kept collection. There were some that you enjoyed playing with more than others. Gabriel did seem to be perfectly content living here and he even had been given what looked like free reign to do whatever the hell he wanted. Besides that whole no knives at the dinner table thing.

“A vehicle stopped at the south gate last week,” she said. “You have to understand that I don’t receive much company.”

The video feed of Daniel struggling in the woods vanished and blinked to a still captured picture from another camera. It was a photograph of a car parked in front of one of the compound’s guarded access points during daylight. The image zoomed and centered on the license plates from several different angles.

“Imagine my surprise when I found its registration matches a car that was verified access to the charity I was attending this evening.”

Alec tore his gaze off the beat-up automobile that he recognized from the chipped paint job alone.

“So?”

“It belongs to someone named Logan Cale.”

“Sounds like you already got your man.” Alec said carefully.

“Mr. Logan Cale is apparently confined to a wheelchair. He didn’t accomplish this alone.” She leaned forward. “Knowing his name doesn’t help me, Alec. I need to know how he can be bought.”

“Have you thought of money?”

She held out her hand. In her palm lay a cell phone.

“Call your friends,” she told him. “Tell them they can have anything they want. Convince them.”

Alec thought of the satellite signal that was at this moment on its way to setting off every single one of Logan’s system alerts and lighting up his monitors like a Christmas tree. He imagined Max finding the codes he’d implanted and using them to break down the intricate puzzle of the security system from the outside in.

“No.” It felt really good to say it. In fact, he wanted to make her even more afraid than she already was. “I hope they sell Gabriel in pieces to whoever has the most spare change.”

“I see.”

Alec watched her walk resignedly out of his room. She stopped outside the door and turned around. Another click on her cigarette case and the single panel on his wall suddenly started to multiply. Each wall rapidly filled with bright sections of plasma until even his ceiling was glowing. All the surfaces of his enclosure were turning a blinding white. Alec knew the quality and grade of that type of illumination. It was identical to the rows of fluorescents that had lined his barracks and his old cell. It was the shade of the endless beige halls and the stark frozen ground of the practice yards. It shone as harshly as the probing medical lamps and surgeons penlights that flashed into his pried open eyes.

He watched as steel bars slid down over his door.

“We’ll talk again in the morning, Alec.”

He blinked at the painful radiance as it grew even more intense. The room’s definition was washed out by the inundation of brilliance that peaked with the power of a hundred high wattage industrial flood lights. Curling into a ball he decided to take back everything he’d ever surmised about the doctor's secession from Manticore. With a gasp, his hands went over his ears as a keen high pitched frequency joined the lights concentrated glare. The horrible sound buzzed right through his skull and burrowed under all rational thought.

Listening to the steady fall of her high heels down the empty corridor, Alec knew this woman was as competent as her former employers.

She’d even learned a few new tricks.

 

tbc


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey there- I was alerted by a reader (usowishuwereme) that one of the chapters was a repeat. I looked and yes it was. I looked some more and ALL the chapters posted were wrong except the first TWO. XD I have no idea how this happened because I check them as I post them, but I apologize to anyone who tried to read this and got extremely confused. Everything should be ok now, and if anything seems wrong and if you have a moment, please let me know! <3
> 
> (as Alec would say: "There goes your tip!")

Logan had long ago stopped believing the transgenic would give them anything they truly needed.

Tight-lipped defiance was expected of most captives. As dawn slowly began to creep through the haze outside, he had to admit he would have welcomed it in place of the exasperating exchange taking place.

The transgenic named Gabriel liked to obliterate questions with rhetorical backlashes of his own. When pressed to elaborate, the man effortlessly slid in barbs and cruel observations designed to do nothing but provoke. After the subject of the wheelchair came up for the fourth time, Logan recognized the desperate tactic for what it was. He had seen Alec implement similar methods of distraction many times before. It was interesting to note that Manticore wasn’t responsible for conditioning any of their soldiers to become excessively verbal under threat. It looked like the X5-49s came up with that flimsy defense all on their own.

Gabriel sat slumped in the shower’s corner, his crumpled tuxedo in fair condition despite his rough handling. Cuffed hands kept finding the scar tissue on his face and throat. His fingertips kept feeling and tracing them as if they were pieces of distracting jewelry. Some of the healed wounds had been carved with a fine tool to convey a sense of aesthetic. Others looked repeatedly slashed into shape with the blunt end of a box cutter.

Cindy decided to say what everyone else wasn’t.

“Your skin,” she ventured hesitantly. “W-Why you do that?”

“I’m like an etch-a-sketch,” Gabriel explained with a tinge of pride. “The faster I make them the faster they fade away.”

“Fantastic,” Max mumbled from the sink. “He’s out of his mind.”

Gabriel winked. “Runs in the family.”

Logan was glad he didn’t have to attempt to stop Max from sending her fist into the X5’s face again. The transgenic’s bravado wasn’t very polished nor was it convincing. The mocking gaze was lost in a shifting state between apathy and the raw terror of being at the mercy of strangers. However, Gabriel never once bothered to ask the identity of the individuals that had abducted him. All he wanted to know was when it was going to be over. As it became painfully obvious that the man wasn’t working with a full deck, their collective anger settled into a heavy frustration.

Logan rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily from behind his glasses.

“Where is Alec?”

“Elaine dropped everything when she heard he was still alive.” Gabriel said in vague disgust. “All of our scheduled lab trials were completely disrupted. But she still wanted to find him even after he’d been out here wallowing in filth for so long. I told her she was nuts to want to bring that into our home but no one ever listens to me—“

“Where is he?” Logan repeated. “Is he is in that house?”

Gabriel seemed to smirk, absently using his bound hands to rub at the blood drying on his chin. “But he doesn’t have his very own floor.”

Logan’s thoughts briefly tangled as he was forced to wonder what that meant.

“Your boss must have a nice fat buyer set up. So who is it?” Max demanded. “China? South Africa?”

Gabriel’s confusion flickered back across his face.

“She only works with other members of the medical profession,” he answered. “Nationality is incidental. That’s why she likes all those boring charity events. The rich doctors come from all over ready to lend a hand—”

“Doctors?” Logan said. “You need to get specific Gabriel. We have to know what she's selling. R&D materials? Tissue samples?”

“She doesn’t have to sell anything.” Gabriel was offended. “She’s loaded.”

“Then what the hell does she—“

“Did you know that tuberculosis still kills more human beings on the planet than any other infectious disease?”

It was already difficult to follow the transgenic’s irregular thought process, but that one threw Logan completely.

“In the last decade alone Elaine has developed six new classes of viable antibiotics,” Gabriel told them confidentially. “We helped of course.”

“We?”

“As in addition to myself. More than one. Plural.”

Logan grit his teeth when Max glanced apprehensively over in his direction. Great leaps in science tended to happen in the course of long and tedious research or through the urgent necessity created by war. When you had neither, success typically occurred at the expense of test subjects. He couldn’t think of a better set of likely candidates than the invisible children of an unregistered government facility.

Logan cleared his throat.

“You allow this woman access to yourself and others so she can use you for unsupervised medical research?”

No approach so far had been very successful in making the transgenic’s scattered words coalesce, but this caught Gabriel’s attention. Logan considered that open disrespect towards the doctor might force some lucidity.

“That kind of practice is monstrous and unconscionable.”

Just like he’d hoped, the transgenic’s gaze narrowed dangerously.

“Subjecting people to harmful tests they are unwilling to perform isn’t right, Gabriel,” Logan said. “You have a right to refuse just like everyone else.”

The transgenic considered him before shifting nosily in his shackles to better address him.

“I have the equivalent of every PhD currently attainable in the field of physical sciences,” Gabriel said carefully. “Stuffing me down a bunch of test tubes would be a waste of resources. The doctor might need a blood draw every now and then but I’m no Petri dish. I’m right there in the trenches. No offense to Elaine but she couldn’t achieve this scale of progress without our smarts.”

Logan looked uneasily at the transgenic’s self inflicted scars again.

“What’re the antibiotics for?” Max asked. “What do they do?”

“Do you ever watch the news?” Gabriel considered her. “Do you see everything that is happening out there?”

“I’m usually standing in the middle of it.” Max responded.

“Some crises do exist outside of this zip code,” Gabriel said. “Some people have vision that extends beyond any lags in their own petty luxury. Some people act instead of standing by and waiting for what they think their civilization owes them—“

“Stop.”

Logan had met enough radicals in his own career to know how this speech went. So the doctor was a radical in her own right. Logan knew of a few other wealthy eccentrics that indulged in similar activities in order to better society without adhering to any of its rules. He tried not to glance self-consciously towards the view outside his windows that not many could afford. “Just-just try and concentrate,” he urged. “What’s all the new medicine for?”

“Maybe you’ve heard about the new strain of TB that’s been stacking children in mass graves down in South America?” The binds rattled as Gabriel got more and more agitated. “The untreatable HIV mutation that’s appeared in India? What about common Malaria that already has a cure but no resources for proper distribution—“

“You’re trying to tell us that… that Gaboriault is developing drug therapies?”

“When Sir Alexander Fleming finally figured out penicillin a lot of things sure changed didn’t they?” Gabriel’s mouth pulled into a grin. “The human condition was greatly improved when pesky things like Syphilis were knocked out of the picture—“

“You’re right,” Logan wanted to keep him on track. “There’s a lot of money to be made in pharmaceuticals.”

“Not really,” Gabriel replied dryly. “Not when the goal is to save the lives of the destitute.”

“Sure,” Max snorted. “I’m supposed to believe that you give a crap about the destitute?”

“Personally? I don’t care about anything.”

Cindy suddenly spoke up from the safety of the hallway. “I dunno, sugar,” she said. “You sure seem to care about that doctor.”

As nervous as the unknown X5 made her, she was still observing Gabriel with cautious sympathy.

“Are we done yet?” he asked tentatively. “Can I leave?”

“What’s so great about that lady?” Max crossed her arms. “She keep your cage nice and clean?”

Gabriel turned to stare up at her in loathing.

“I have to go back.”

Pressing his body back against the tiles, Gabriel’s throat worked as he tried to swallow back his reemerging fear. His gaze worriedly searched their faces for any clue of what might come next. Logan heard himself sigh, his own tense posture sagging with empathy for the frightened transgenic. This young man might have tried to do Logan harm but he was still a product of Manticore and victim to circumstances beyond his control.

“It’s okay,” Logan lowered his voice. “It’ll be all right.”

Whether the X5 was a menace or not there were unofficial channels to follow and options to explore.

“We can get you out of here," he reasoned. “We can send you somewhere safe. Some place where people like Elaine Gaboriault will never find you again—“

“No!”

They were all startled by the harsh shout.

“I just want to go home.”

Logan watched the transgenic’s eyes turn bright, wet lines marring the blood on his cheeks and making him drag a sleeve indelicately under his nose. Whatever the transgenic was telling them, he knew for certain that it was genuine. The X5’s panic was feeding off the dread that Logan might make good on the promise and make him vanish into thin air just like Alec. He began to wonder if anyone on either side was doing the transgenics any favors at all.

Regardless of intention no one seemed able to leave them alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alec had wrapped the blankets around his body and pressed his face to the floor but he could still see the light.

In the meager dark he had created he could see it leaking in behind his tightly shut eyelids. No layer of cloth could block out the incessant hum that had been embedded along with the bandwidth of searing luminosity. The cutting razor of the sound sliced through the clasped hands over his ears, and dissolved all efforts to calmly and rationally create steps that would get him out of this room. The blind of the sickly blue glare flashed behind his closed eyes as the frequency rose and fell in a carefully timed wave. His slow count of minutes was lost into a blur of hours. Each time he tried to get up and find some way to end the onslaught he collapsed back on the floor. The only thought he could form in the unremitting noise was a silent plead to the doctor to turn the agonizing machines off.

Panic was not a response a human body could sustain for hours. Over and over his mind fought to redirect his consciousness. He struggled to cling to the hope that the hack he’d performed down in that lab had worked. If he concentrated on believing that it had sailed right through all of the doctor’s careful firewalls, the force of his will might actually deliver it right into Logan’s inbox. The notion should have made him feel better, but it didn’t do much.

Alec groaned and tried to focus harder on the possibility of success.

While he was laying here on this floor being scoured from the inside out, the call for help was probably hitting all of Logan’s buffers by now. The Eyes Only network was slowly picking the signal apart into imperceptible pieces to determine if it was hostile, useful or an insidious parcel of spam. The clamor accumulated and pooled behind his eyes, the shrill vibration spreading over his skull like hairline fractures in crystal.

With another moan he felt his mind give up on coherency and settle into a deadened acceptance.

Like his body, his brain involuntarily assumed a defensive posture. Curled on his side, he lay perfectly still and allowed the racket to liquefy into a white noise. The harsh thrum of its edge grated across his skin and down the rigid arch of his spine. Shuddering in the hot dark under the heap of bedclothes, he pulled his body into a tighter ball.

He felt sweat under his shaking hands and imagined it was blood leaking from his ears, eyes and nose.

Alec fought the instinct to try to cover his head with his arms, knowing that this pain was nothing he could physically ward off. Tasting salt on his tongue, he realized his clenched teeth had bitten into the insides of his mouth. With a strained whimper he allowed himself to wonder if this was how it was going to be forever. The doctor could lock his bedroom doors and forget about him if she wanted to, letting him lay here writhing like he was engulfed in flames that would never burn out. He could be installed like that X5-49 sealed away in that freezer deep underground. This would all keep going until she flipped a switch or another Pulse hit to neatly wipe all the electricity right off the globe—

Something changed.

It took him a full minute to comprehend that the piercing noise he was hearing was nothing but an echo sizzling through his auditory nerves. Another minute went by before he figured out that its inexplicable absence wasn’t because his eardrums had finally ruptured.

The mechanism had been turned off.

His body didn’t want to let go of the tension it’d been progressively amassing all night long. Alec forced himself to sag, the tightness in his muscles loosening with each deep breath he dragged in. Rolling onto his back, he stared up into the black of the blanket stretched over his face. Listening to the ragged inhales and exhales, he made his frantic heartbeat slowly resume to its normal rate.

Through the lingering buzz ringing in his ears, he started to pick up on something strange.

Alec dragged the heavy covers away and felt the blissful touch of cool air on his hot damp face. Staggering up onto his feet, he looked dazedly around at the now dimmed plasma screens that covered the walls and ceiling. They were still white but they had been dulled. They were washed out and gray like a sky. Walking cautiously towards his door, he passed his unsteady hands over the metal bars first to test for any electrical current. Finding none, he pressed himself up against them to see what was going on in the hallway.

The doctor was placing a plastic storage box over another one. There were several empty containers waiting on the floor.

She was dressed in simple clothing that would keep her thin limbs warm in the drafty house. Without her makeup and glittering finery he was reminded of her real age once again. It was even more evident in her frail grip on the heavy box as she tugged it along the ground rather than lifting it.

“You movin’?” Alec asked in a hoarse voice.

Ignoring the question, she pulled out a bulky object from the container before rearranging it in a more satisfactory position. Alec abruptly recognized what the box and the one below it were filled with. They were the thick white books that lined the shelves of Daniel’s room.

He heard the noise again and realized what it was.

Alec couldn’t see him but the direction of the sound indicated the transgenic was in the room next door. It seemed like retribution for breaking the law was more thought out than Alec had suspected; it was customized.

“I thought he couldn’t talk.” Alec said.

"I believe I said rarely,” she said. “What child doesn’t know how to say yes, no, and more?”

Daniel was attempting to say no. Over and over again in a weak way that made Alec think he’d been out in that forest saying the same thing all night long.

“Why don’t you rearrange his furniture while you’re at it?” Alec suggested. “You could hit rewind every time he trips over a new throw rug!”

“We will talk later,” she said. “You’ve both had a difficult evening and I’d like you to get some rest.”

“Wait.”

His hands flexed on the bars, his fatigue dulling the sound of his rage into a hollow demand. The doctor paused, her eyes tired but her posture exhibiting deliberate patience. The sight of her indulging the interruption made his anger flare through his exhaustion, the metal frame in his fists creaking as he shook it.

“You-you have to tell me something.”

She put a hand to her temple and brushed her thin hair aside.

“I’ve had a very long night Alec, I’m sure you have many questions but this will have to wait for a later date—“

“What the hell is all of this for?”

She appeared taken back by the words, any further efforts to stifle any time consuming inquiry momentarily set aside.

“Why are you keeping any of us alive?” he growled. “You should be giving Michael a mercy killing! And Gabriel? That guy belongs in a straightjacket!”

“Your small mindedness disappoints me, Alec.”

The doctor came close enough to lean against the barred doorframe and shared her small smile again.

“My professional failures haven’t caused me to give up,” she said softly. “Your flaws have been grossly exaggerated by the technology that gave you your gifts. These defects are nothing more than symptoms that can be treated like any other illness.”

“Like Lucien?”

He liked how the gentle cant of her gaze hardened at the sound of that name. When no more optimistic rhetoric started pouring forth, he decided to ask what was on his mind. It had been running back and forth through his thoughts ever since he’d found the last X5-49 of her collection hidden deep underground.

“Why even bother locking that freak away when you could freeze dry him like everything else?”

"Music," she answered distantly. "He enjoys music."

“Music.” Alec repeated.

“He's never said so of course. He can't. He was used in rage studies and the anatomy of psychosis. They used his brain like a pincushion. There's hardly anything left of the frontal lobe now."

Her seamless detachment made him swallow hard. She talked of another's mutilation as she would an unfortunate limp.

"But what little brain activity he has calms significantly when I feed music through the intercom. Any will do but I like to believe classical might be more beneficial to his quality of life."

His weak lunge against the metal between them only made her faint smile grow fonder.

"Do you enjoy anything, Alec?"

His chest hitched in a laugh of disbelief.

"Why ask me?" he said. "Why don’t you check your test results?”

“I have.”

She looked saddened again. If the analysis of all those exams had culminated into yet another embarrassing mess to add to her collection, he hoped he was the most spectacular disappointment of all.

"You don't have to understand my intentions," she finished. "In fact, it's completely unnecessary."

"Great." His knuckles whitened on the bars between her face and his. "I hope you understand mine."

She shrugged, picking up an armful of books. When the last neat stack was placed in the waiting plastic bin, she wiped her hands and took her leave.

Alec knew Daniel’s door had also been barred as soon as the doctor slid the last box firmly up against the wall. He could hear the other transgenic at the entrance of the adjoining room. The desperate attempt at words gradually became incoherent with the realization that she was leaving. Listening to the steady fall of her footsteps retreat down the empty corridor, Alec figured he might know why she had looked at him with so much compassion. Even an unlucky bastard like Lucien probably had some good days.

He was suddenly relieved Daniel couldn’t hear a thing. It removed any requirement on his part to offer something that might help. Any gloriously comforting words he could conjure would be worthless if he could actually think of them anyway. He wished his sense of hearing was hindered too. Alec didn’t want to listen to what the transgenic’s distorted words had shifted to. He slid down the bars and slumped to a sit on the floor.

The soft noise Daniel was making now sounded a lot like crying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Logan had decided that they all required a few hours for a time out.

Cindy had halfheartedly suggested the notion of eating before heading for the sofa. When Logan heard nothing more about it he found her lying with her eyes closed against the armrest. He didn’t expect Max to be following any of her own good advice but he hoped she’d take some kind of break too. When he checked his bathroom turned holding cell, she was still standing vigilantly in the open door.

Gabriel was the only one using the opportunity to get some sleep. Slumber didn’t come easy to the X5s, let alone a complete relaxed state in a hostile situation. It made Logan think about what Max had said about the captive transgenic’s lack of training. When the familiar features weren’t constantly contorting into fear and anger, the genes Gabriel shared with his missing clone were plain. Logan knew those similarities could run deeper than physicality. Looking at Max’s drawn face he wondered if she was thinking the same. Her clones shared a lot more than just a smile too.

He looked back at the X5 sleeping peacefully in a tuxedo on the blood spotted shower tile.

Logan quietly wheeled back to his work station and woke up the computer. He waited for the monitor to come to life and ask for the dozens of passwords.

“I never thought about it before.”

Cindy was watching him drowsily from the sofa. Even under the weight of fatigue, she still looked startled by everything they had heard from Gabriel’s interrogation. For some reason, the bewildered look in her eyes reminded him of the very last time he’d seen Alec.

“More of ‘em, I mean,” Cindy said. “Never thought about family.”

Logan sat back in his chair and tried to work his sore shoulders. Max talked about her family unit all the time but it was hard for even an educated man to understand the reality of her attachment. A part of him had always considered the term a futile grasp at a sentiment that ordinary civilians took for granted.

“So I was thinking?”

Logan watched her prop an arm under her head, any sleep she had found far away.

“All this Gabriel wants to do is give a call home,” her gaze drifted in the direction of the bathroom. “All he can think about is seein’ that woman again.”

The computer needed his bio print one more time before his station access was finally flowing in both directions to the municipality network. The city gave him a way in to the federal satellites and that gave him the world.

“So,” Cindy continued. “Maybe that’s what Alec is doin’ too?”

Logan looked back at his terminal uncertainly when his standard interface was interrupted by a security warning. The military contingent of the hardware floating in low orbit above always gave him a hard time. It was a minor yellow flag that popped up with annoying frequency whenever he reconnected.

He frowned.

This one was a little different then what he usually got.

“I’m telling you,” Cindy yawned. “I’d bet my grandmother's rhinestones that Alec is tryin’ to shout loud enough for someone to hear.”

A block of code started scrolling down his computer that he had never seen before. Implanted with all the binary, a simple pattern had been fixed. It was there in plain sight so there would be no possibility the deviation would be missed. When the window was maximized the pattern took on the form of a recognizable image.

It was a large and perfectly proportioned smiley face.

Logan blinked uncertainly at the blank but friendly countenance on the monitor screen. It took him a few moments to put two and two together, but after he did all his exhaustion washed away like he’d just enjoyed a full night of sleep. He turned quickly back to Cindy with a growing smile of his own.

“I think you’re right.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"You know, if you would just assert a little more pressure between the scapulae, it'd make for some exquisite coloring."

"Whatever," Max grumbled. "I'll assert more than pressure if you don't shut your trap."

It was a little difficult for the bound transgenic to speak with his cheek forced solidly against the curb. Max's boot held him in check as she strapped on the rest of her body armor.

Having left his chair behind, Logan checked his own vest and tested the strength of the exo-skeleton. Nervously looking up and down the empty street, he loaded his gun. All of the meandering access roads that surrounded the Gaboriault estate appeared the same. It was nothing but weathered asphalt surrounded by the pine forest that had been carefully planted to shut out all signs of the city nearby. The last time Logan had been here all he’d been able to do was drive along the borders of the restricted margins and watch.

But this time he had come prepared.

The cloaked code disguised as a smiley face had been sitting in every single one of Logan's network filters. How Alec had managed to send a signal out of Elaine Gaboriault’s personal laboratory was above and beyond Logan’s comprehension, but he knew he should have expected nothing less than the remarkable. The message had embedded several strands of sequence that were a crack for the house’s sophisticated defense system. Along with the hacks bought from the landscapers that were allowed on the grounds every week, they almost had a complete free pass to the inside. However, while the passwords were invaluable they still weren’t enough to get them all the way to the front door.

“What are we gonna do when we find her?” Max flexed her hands in protective black gloves. “Besides be polite.”

Logan checked his weapon before stowing it in his jacket. “I’m offering a trade.”

“You think she’ll give up Alec for this guy?” Max was doubtful. “Alec is a way better genetic template than this fruit loop.”

“No,” Logan shook his head. “We’re not giving him back.”

The transgenic in question was listening to them nervously from his sprawl on the ground.

For whatever security code information they lacked, they needed Gabriel to fill in the blanks. If Gabriel didn’t know the numbers that would save their lives from the automated guns then they would resort to Plan B. Logan hadn’t seen Max wield many pistols, but even one that was unloaded seemed strange in her hands. But the presentation, no matter how dramatic, would get its intention across to those well-situated cameras the doctor had set up all across the span of her property.

A good loud shout at the closest short circuit camera with a promise of the X5-49s brain splatter would do the rest.

“What’s the trade then?” Max considered the other X5. “His head?”

Gabriel struggled to his knees and glared at them vehemently.

Logan held up a small compact disc.

“I found a few things on her charity work. She’s been doing a lot of embezzling to get her medications down to countries that can’t afford it. Once I knew where to look, I found enough dirt in the last year alone that would put her away for violating all sorts of international trade law.”

“Sounds serious,” Max smoothed the straps on her Kevlar harness.

“Actually, I am starting to kind of see where she’s coming from.”

Max looked at him sideways as she leaned down to tighten her boot laces.

“I don’t have to respect the woman to admire what she’s done.” Logan shrugged.

“You don’t have to like her either.” Gabriel added.

"That's good because I think I hate her.” Max said.

“No good is accomplished without evil,” Gabriel muttered. “The world is no longer a place in which you must justify the means to an end.”

“That’s a great idea,” Max nodded as she hauled him up off the pavement. “You and your boss can split the Noble Peace Prize.”

Glancing around the quiet street, Logan reconciled his GPS with the computer’s segmented map of the surrounding landscape. With the info streaming in from his own station, the dish on the car roof would keep supplying him with a decent uplink. He had instructed Cindy to do a steady slow circle of the property to assure a nice range of coverage. With all that in place they could start a nice walking tour of the hazardous property and shut down all the mechanized weaponry as they went.

“The grid is still showing all in the green. I’m not sure how we’ll know when it’s completely offline.”

“It’s down,” Max murmured, her gaze moving over the forest. “I can’t hear it anymore. Can’t you tell? It got so quiet.”

Logan couldn’t hear anything but the jets whining overhead and the ever present thud of sector patrol helicopters that never left the skies. Gabriel stumbled forward when Max gave him a shove towards the trees.

“Lead the way, Logan.”

He pointed his phone towards the property and identified the next square of the security grid.

“Head north, 20 meters and then we plug in another code.”

Max nodded and pushed the other transgenic when he was reluctant to step away from the public jurisdiction of crumbling asphalt.

“What’s a matter?” she asked. “Thought you were homesick?”

Gabriel fidgeted in place before unenthusiastically stepping forward.

“This isn’t going to be pretty.”

 

tbc


End file.
